


Omadonna Ascendent

by macthecat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Alpha Castiel/Omega Dean Winchester, Alpha Sam, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alpha/Omega, Betrayal, Dean/Cas Happy Ending, Dubious Consent, Graphic Description of Sexual Violence, I'm Going to Hell, M/M, Mpreg, Multi, Mute Dean Winchester, Non-Consensual Body Modification, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Dean, Protective Castiel, Rape/Non-con Elements, Ritualistic Sexual Situations, Sam Needs Forgiveness, Threesome - M/M/M, Wincest - Freeform, alternative universe, graphic description of violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-05
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-01-09 03:52:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 110
Words: 353,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12268320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macthecat/pseuds/macthecat
Summary: In an A/B/O universe, where mankind has followed roughly the same path of development as our own, except for the influences of Pack origins and the religious beliefs born of those origins, civilisation is on the brink of a inter-designation war that could destroy the whole world.With technology and medical advances allowing the population to grow to a level the Earth can barely sustain, a precarious imbalance in birth rates between the designations has resulted in an unnatural state of Beta ascendancy as the sheer volume of Betas has given them power they are not genetically designed to handle.Beta suffrage has led to the dissolution of PackLaw in many countries and the rise of the Church of Abel, an insidious religion designed for the sole purpose of disenfranchising the Packs and creating a world in which, ultimately, only Betas will henceforth be born. Faced with their own imminent destruction, many of the other designations would rather let the entire world burn rather than surrender their existence without challenge.In this world, the few remaining Omegáres are sold as sexual chattels, used to control the sexual proclivities of the last Alphas...





	1. Author's notes and forward

**Author's Note:**

> ...and the Alpha Primáres, who historically ruled over the packs, are relegated to mere figureheads, even the power accorded by their vast economic wealth unable to compensate for their inability to mate unless they can procure an Omegá from the Free Betas.
> 
> But there is an ancient prophesy, buried in the annals of time, remembered only by the Omagáres, that in the end of days, when all hope seems lost, the original Omegá, the Omadonna, will be reborn on earth. He will suffer the sins of the whole world. He will be abused and mutilated and tortured almost unto death by his fellow men, but he will be raised from his perdition by the All-Father himself, who will take flesh from the pure line of Alpha Primáres to claim him, and though plague will rip the world asunder, together the Alpha Primá and his Omegá mate will restore the Earth to how the All-father intended it to be.
> 
> "As it is written, let it be so."

Let me state something clearly, right now at the beginning, so you can press your back button and move on if you so choose.

This is not going to be a 'nice' story. 

Like any epic tale involving an Armageddon, there is an awful lot of gratuitous violence and a shit-load of rape, death and destruction. Oh and bad language. Lots and lots of bad language.

But I hope there is enough humour threaded amongst the dark angst to balance it out and I promise there will be a happy ending for the important characters in this story.

Please, read the warnings. If anything there isn't your cup of tea, back away quickly right now.

As adults you can police your own choice of reading material so if you think you might be 'triggered' by something in this story, please don't read it. And, respectfully, definitely don't read it and then feel entitled to complain about it.

It's a very slow-burn. It's going to take almost a dozen chapters before any of the main protagonists are even born, let alone start having wild monkey sex with each other. 

If you want PWP, you will not find it here and few of the warnings apply until much later in the story either but I'd rather post every single one of them up front so you know what you'll be getting in to.

And although it will take me a while to polish and post each chapter, the story is finished. I couldn't post a single word of a story as complex as this without having already intricately plotted every single step of it in advance, so it's too late to change anything that happens. Please don't ask me to do so, because that ship has sailed. All the various threads of this story are woven into a complex tapestry that could unravel with the snipping of a single thread.

Because I prefer to avoid vast swathes of exposition, you will encounter a number of strange and unfamiliar words right from the synopsis. Hopefully everything will become self-explanatory as the story progresses, but to aid the Reader I have posted a glossary of terms. This does, however, contain some spoilers so you may prefer to skip over it and only use it for referral if necessary.

The nature of A/B/O interactions mean there's always a fine line between non-con and dub-con, so I have emphasised the former for the avoidance of any doubt.

I am, at heart, purely a Destiel shipper. I have never been particularly interested in Wincest or Cas/Sam/Dean so no one could possibly be more surprised than me that both became integral to this story.

However, ultimately and unashamedly this is a Destiel tale and the Sam portrayed in this story is, for a considerable while, not a particularly likeable one. If you love Sam, you possibly will not enjoy this story although the theme of redemption is integral to this tale and there are no true villains in this story, only fallible humans. Most of whom eventually learn and grow from their mistakes.

Although this universe explores pack mentality, and only the Betas are what we would consider fully 'human', there are no shape shifters in this story. Indeed, the origins of these particular characters are never explored in evolutionary terms. Any Darwin-type scientist in this society with the temerity to have suggested any theory of evolution would undoubtedly have suffered the fate of Gallileo, so whether the characters are descended from apes or wolves or any other form of being is irrelevant as the characters themselves do not care. As far as they are concerned, they are the way they are because their god, the All-Father, decreed it should be so.

But, that having been said, there's definitely more than a little of the lupine in them.

There are no non-canon deaths but people do die in this tale, some of them horribly. Many characters suffer terribly, particularly Dean and Sam, but I don't expect their canon time in Hell or the cage were walks in the park either, so I make no apologies.

I hope you like it. 

But, I repeat, please read the warnings.


	2. Glossary Of Terms

Glossary Of Terms

Alpha Primá ( Pl. Alpha Primáres)  
A very rare, genetically supreme Alpha. Primáres can only be sired by a Primá and whelped by an Omegá. Only Primáres produce pheromones that enable them to completely dominate any other designation. Unlike normal Alphas, Primáres form a knot for procreation. Primáres can mate with any designation but can only produce a knot inside an Omegá.  
A Primá sires only Primá or Alpha pups.  
At most, one in a thousand Alphas identifies as a Primá.

Alpha  
An enhanced male human. Alphas are the offspring of two Betas or, rarely, are the offspring of an Alpha Primá and an Omegá.  
Some Alphas are born sterile, they are genetic sports like mules. If an Alpha is potent, he will sire only Beta pups, whelped by a Beta female.  
Less than 0.1% of male pups are born with the Alpha designation. So in a county like the US, with a population of over 300 million, only perhaps 150,000 are Alpha and consequently there are many towns and small cities without a single Alpha amongst the population.  
Alphas have a superhuman strength and many excel in Law Enforcement or the Military. Although Alphas genetics tend towards brawn rather than brain, a high proportion of Alphas are still wealthy captains of industry because PackLaw rules of inheritance that Betas have so far failed to repeal, automatically disinherit any Beta siblings.  
Physically Alphas look largely human, albeit usually taller and stronger than average, but they have a few specific unique differences. Alphas have much larger genitals; Alpha teenagers suffer three or four years of 'rut rage' when they are obsessed with satisfying their sexual urges; When Alphas are angry or aroused their eyes emit a phosphorus light, making them appear to flash red and all of their teeth are sharply pointed, similar to sharks.  
Most free-born Alphas ultimately choose to pledge allegiance to Packs because they feel unwelcome in Beta society and PackLaw offers them considerably more benefits than BetaLaw.

Beta  
The most populous designation, forming over 99% of humanity. By the time of this story, 90% of the Beta population in countries such as the American Union, The Russian Confederation, The Chinese Dynasty and the Asiatic Antipodes have announced suffrage, moved out of the packs and are living as independent Free Betas.  
In smaller countries, such as Brittaña, PackLaw has remained dominant.  
Betas are physically completely human but they carry the recessive DNA of other designations and the mating of two Betas consequently can, on very rare occasions, give birth to Alpha or Omegá pups.  
A larger proportion of geniuses are born with the Beta designation as though nature has compensated for their weaker physiology with enhanced brainpower.  
Naturally, many of the brightest Betas grew dissatisfied with their position at the bottom of Pack structure and that led to the Beta 'War of Independence', though War is somewhat of a misnomer as no blood was spilt because when the Betas demanded equal rights, instead of denying them, the Primáres simply told them if they didn't want to adhere to PackLaw they could simply vacate the formal packlands and rent unoccupied land to live on as Free Betas.  
Despite their vast numbers, Betas own less than 10% of the world's economic wealth.  
All land is owned by the packs, even though the formal packlands are physically small, and a tithe is payable for every acre rented by the Betas for their 'independent' living. It is impossible for the Betas to circumvent the economic disparity because no matter what they personally create or achieve, if they are unfortunate enough to birth an Alpha pup, that pup automatically inherits and almost all independent-born Alphas grow up to pledge their allegiance to the packs.

Omegá (pl. Omegáres)  
The rarest of the designations, only produced by the mating of two Betas who both carry the recessive Omegá gene. Even then, the odds are infinitesimally low that an Omegá will be conceived so only one in 5million births is likely to be an Omegá.  
Omegáres look fully human until presentation, except for their small male genitals, although internally they are vastly different from birth since they are, fundamentally, hermaphrodites.  
After presentation, an Omegá's rectum is an elongated oval shape, one opening incorporating two internal passages, one for reproduction and the other for elimination. The entire oval is lined with labial lips that engorge during copulation, forming the appearance of a multi-petaled rose. Thus it is usual to call that part of their anatomy their Flores or, in common parlance, their 'Flower'.  
An Omegá's reproductive passage is lined with sensitive suction cups similar to those on an octopus's tentacles. It is only the sensations caused by those cups that cause a Primá to form a knot, which is why only Omegás can reproduce with them. An Omegás reproductive passage is designed to accommodate the vast girth of a Primá's knot, so when an Alpha mates with an Omegá, they are far more likely to penetrate the anal passage as it is more appropriately sized to pleasure an Alpha's cock.  
There is another difference unique to Omegáres. Because they have been physically created to be perfect mates of Primáres, it is imperative that the labial petals of their Flores can relax easily to allow the access of their hugely endowed mates. There are two mechanisms that cause an automatic relaxation. One is the gentle spanking of their buttocks. The second is the insertion of a foreign object into their throat. Whilst either or both of these are utilised naturally during the mating rituals of an Omegá and Primá, they are weaknesses that can be abused by Betas and Alphas in the now corrupt society in which this tale is set.

All-Father  
The creator or GOD, if you like.  
The original All-Father Testament, the religion the Packs adhere to, set a strict hierarchy with Betas at the bottom, Alphas above them, Primáres above the Alphas and Omegáres highest of all.

Omadonna  
The first Omegá, bride of the All-father and mother of Adam, the first Alpha Primá. It is believed by the packs that all Omagáres share a direct spiritual link to the first mother and if their eyes flare gold when they speak, they are prophetically speaking the words of the Omadonna himself.

The Abel Tablet  
Found mysteriously in the eighteenth century, the Abel tablet purports to be an ancient amendment to the original All-Father Testament, in which it is claimed that the All-father changed his mind about hierarchal structure and instead declared all designations to be equal.  
Naturally, the packs believe the Abel Tablet to be a forgery.

The Church Of Abel  
A Beta-led ministry that is attempting to spread the words of the Abel Tablet.

Docking  
The castration of Omegáres by Betas, purportedly done as a health precaution because Omegás only have vestigial male genitals and the Betas claim they can rot with disuse and this will cause cancerous cells to develop.  
Primáres consider the docking of Omegáres to be a horrific mutilation and most will reject a proposed mate if he is docked.

Muting  
A less common but possibly even more horrific mutilation of Omegáres. Whilst the removal of tonsils in any other designation can be a simple health benefit, in an Omegá it has two side effects. They become permanently sexually receptive as their bodies interpret the operation scars incorrectly as evidence of a foreign object in their throats. Secondly, they lose the ability to speak. Although the first Omegá to suffer the reaction had been operated on for legitimate medical reasons, most subsequent mutings were done deliberately.

PackLaw  
A complex legal system developed around the original tenets of the All-Father Testament.  
For three centuries the Betas have been slowly attempting to replace PackLaw with new laws based upon the Abel Tablet but it is a long and torturous process as the Packs have enough money and lawyers to fight them every step of the way. 

Beta Governments  
The independent Betas have set up institutions to govern their society, with democratically elected senators and a president in the United States. In many respects the government in this universe is the same lumbering beast as in the USA we know. However, regardless of their attempts to be self-governing, the Betas are operating under 'occupation', since the Packs retain ultimate ownership of the land the Betas want to self-govern and additionally any Alpha Primá has the ability to make anyone of any lesser designation bow to their will. It is practically impossible to raise arms against an enemy who has the ability to disarm you simply by telling you to put your weapons down.  
But Betas are clever and not all wars are fought with weaponry.

Days of the week.  
In this world, they follow the pattern of strict lunar months of 28 days because the waxing and waning of the moon is directly attributed to the Holy Omadonna. Weeks are seven days in length but although this universe followed roughly our own pattern of influences, there were no corresponding pantheons of gods. It would make no sense in this universe for days to be named after gods such as Odin and Freya, so days and months in this month all relate to the All-Father, the Omadonna and aspects of their divinity.  
Thus:  
Monday is Lunesday, named for the Moon that represents the Omadonna's birthing channel.  
Tuesday is Solasday, named for the Sun which represents the gold florescence that signifies the Omadonna's presence.  
Wednesday is Floresday, named for the Omadonna's flower.  
Thursday is Verdesday, named for the Omadonna's Emerald eyes.  
Friday is Farasday, named for the All-Father.  
Saturday is Lecheday, named for the milk that flows from the Omadonna's breasts.  
Sunday is Alfarsday, because the All-Father was jealous the Omadonna had so many days so wanted two of his own. It was an alpha thing.

Language  
It would be too bizarre to expect English readers to read a story written in a new language but equally improbable that English would have evolved in exactly the same way in a universe with so many differing influences. As a compromise, I have left most of the lexicon unchanged from our norm but certain words are changed to show a far heavier influence of Latin languages on the evolution of English in this universe. Many of the changes simply relate to pronunciation, and hopefully many readers will understand the subtle difference between Omega and Omegá. For those who don't know, or don't care, just ignore it as a writers foible.


	3. Prologue

Cain Adamson was, it was generally acknowledged, the least likely of the pack's twelve Alpha Primá pups to take over the mantle of leadership on his Sire's death. Indeed, had the pack's Escuela followed the tradition of normal Beta High schools, Cain would have undoubtedly starred in its yearbook as 'least likely to succeed'.

But his mother, the Omegá Evan, had an unmistakable fondness for his strangest pup and frequently interceded on his part whenever his Sire, Adam, took issue with Cain's less than traditional behaviours.

Adam Sethson was not only the Grandé Alpha Primá of the entire American Union that stretched from Canada down to Paraguay (and thus, possibly, could also have been considered the most important Alpha Primá in the western world) but also, and crucially, he could trace his lineage right back to the original Adam, the first son of the All-Father himself. Whilst none of the packs had truly been seen as a monarchy since the Beta revolution of the 18th century (except in Brittaña and España and a few other European and Nordic countries, where the packs had somehow retained PackLaw in its entirety) Adam took his position as Grandé Alpha Primá very seriously and procreated with enthusiasm to ensure his genetic birthright was dutifully passed to the next generation.

Thus Adam gifted his beloved Omegá, Evan, with twenty seven pups in total, of which fifteen were merely of Alpha designation but the remainder were Alpha Primáres. Although both Adam and Evan naturally loved their alpha pups and raised them to be proud of their designations, it is pointless to pretend they were considered anything other than surplus to requirement by most of the pack. The fact Evan birthed an heir and eleven spares was of far more interest to everyone outside the immediate family.

Of his twelve Alpha Primá pups, there were ten who were tiny carbon copies of their sire and the oldest, Michael Adamson, was the popular choice to succeed him, with Lucifer Adamson a close contender. Michael, it must be said, was a stern, serious boy who had apparently been whelped with the weight of responsibility already heavy on his shoulders. Even as a young pup he had rarely laughed or smiled and as a teenager he carried himself with the stiff, unbending gait of a far older man. Adam could often be seen to be frowning in contemplation as he watched Michael's interactions with the pack. Michael's supporters read approval in those stares. Lucifer's fervently believed the opposite.

On first glance to an outsider, it would actually have been the third pup, Gabriel Adamson, who should have been his sire's biggest disappointment. Gabriel had a talent for mischief and an irreverent attitude that shocked all who met him. He tended to dismiss all of Adam's portentous comments with the mocking quip, "Oh, if the great GAPOTAU himself said it, it must be true."

Gabriel had similar contempt for his strait-laced brother Michael, often declaring it was improbable Michael would ever be capable of claiming an Omegá , since he'd have to remove the vast cock out of his own ass before being able to bend enough to fuck someone else.

Evan rather liked Gabriel.

Unlike Gabriel, who was loud, boisterous and irrepressible, Cain was quiet and meditative. Where Adam's other Primá sons were assertively masculine and used their Primá pheromones without compunction to enforce their will over Betas and Alphas alike, Cain was content to ask politely for anything he required; resorting at most to a glower of disapproval if he ever had to repeat himself.

But it wasn't Cain's politeness or quietness or even his odd hobby of bee-keeping (when the more usual casual pastimes of Alpha Primáres were hunting, shooting and rampant fucking) that caused the consternation in the pack and the general consensus that he wasn't quite 'right'. 

It wasn't even the fact that he fell head over heels for a pretty Beta girl, Colette, and married her on the very next full moon (Though that did raise a few eyebrows.) It was the fact that he expressed absolutely no interest in claiming an Omegá too. It was that one fact which changed perceptions of Cain's behaviour from a possibly charming eccentricity to rumours he'd possibly suffered oxygen deprivation during his whelping, since it was biologically impossible for an Alpha Primá to sire pups with any designation except an Omegá.

The popular saying regarding Alpha Primáres went, 'Betas are for fun and Omegáres are for pups'. Since, as Gabriel pointed out, Cain didn't even seem to understand the concept of 'Fun', it was quite inexplicable that he'd want a Beta wife and doubly inexplicable that he'd reject the idea of claiming an Omegá entirely. Brain damage seemed the only reasonable explanation.

It might have been supposed that Cain's lack of desire for an Omegá would have been a good thing for the finances of the pack, given Omegáres ever increasing rarity and consequential horrific cost. WIth every generation, the Betas had become more greedy, insisting on higher and higher 'bride prices' for their rare as Astatine Omegá offspring and since only Betas could give birth to Omegáres, and fewer and fewer of the growing Beta population lived within packs, the independent Free Betas were able to demand a king's ransom for their precious pups.

With 12 Alpha Primá sons to purchase Omegáres for, Adam could have been forgiven for being pleased one of his children was so peculiar as to refuse one and, truth be told, he secretly was. His only regret was it was Cain who was refusing, rather than the far more irritating Gabriel.

Still, without an Omegá, 'poor' Cain was automatically disqualified from inheriting the pack, something that pleased Michael and Lucifer greatly.

Evan, however, just laughed whenever anyone used the words 'poor' and 'Cain' in the same sentence. "Just wait," he'd say. "Cain will surprise you all. Maybe he will even sire the Second-coming of the All-Father who is destined to raise the Reborn Omadonna from perdition and restore righteousness to the world." Then he'd smile beatifically and people would shiver, disquieted by the Omegá, particularly when it was rumoured his eyes had flashed gold as he spoke his prophetic words.

Adam, for all his faults and he had a few too many to mention here, was too traditional in his thinking to dismiss the words of his Omegá as mere idle fancy. The All-Father had decreed that all Omegáres, for all eternity, would have direct access to the wisdom of the Omadonna and despite centuries of new Beta laws and perversions, and their damnable forgery, 'The Abel Tablet', Adam held faith with the All-Father and willingly worshipped at Evan's altar. So whilst publicly Adam said nothing to disabuse Michael and Lucifer from believing it was inevitable that one or the other of them would be his chosen heir, secretly he held an almost superstitious belief that Evan was right and somehow Cain would gain the ascendency.

Although Adam managed to purchase four Omegáres from Europe for his eldest sons; beautiful proud boys who had been raised, like Evan, in the pure knowledge of their own holy status, the seven Omegáres he purchased from his own country were sad oppressed, abused creatures with no understanding of their own Holy status and no spirit left inside them. They perceived themselves as having been sold into sexual slavery, rather than having been gifted with the status of pseudo Omadonnas by the application of their mating bites. They thought the money paid for them was a cost paid for ownership of their bodies, rather than a bride-price willingly gifted for the opportunity to worship at their altars.

They didn't even perceive that their flowers WERE altars because their flowers had been defiled multudinous times by Alpha cocks in supposed preparation for penetration by their Alpha Primá mates.

This was, the Betas insisted, a necessary act of kindness, because it had been decided by the Beta senate that Alpha Primá cocks were too large for virgins to safely bear. Indeed, they declared, the new Beta laws, set in accordance with the teachings of the Church of Abel, would no longer allow sale of any virgin Omegáres. All Omegáres, on presentation, would be given into the care of independent Free Alphas for preparation and training before being offered for sale to the packs. They stated this was fully in accordance with the PackLaw which stated that no physical harm should ever be caused to an Omegá.

Even in his horrified fury, Adam was wise enough to perceive the multi-layered reasoning behind the Beta's clever perversion of PackLaw governing Omegáres.

Of course, ultimately, this was an obvious attack against the Alpha Primáres. By defiling the Omegáres, the Betas clearly hoped the Primáres would reject them as potential brides. Without an Omegá , a Primá could not sire pups and within a generation there would be no more Primáres. 

Yet the way in which the Omegáres were being defiled undoubtedly solved another Beta problem. By rejecting PackLaw and living as independents, the Betas had no recourse against the strength and proclivities of the occasional Alphas born outside of the packlands. Although at most 0.1% of male pups were born as Alphas, given the now vast birth rate in the modern free world, that still equated to a lot of rampant Alphas living outside the packlands. Teenage Alphas suffered years of rut rage and only the strict control of a Primá's pheromones prevented them acting upon their urges.

The Beta communities that rejected Pack governship had no physical way of controlling their Alphas and, consequently, Free Beta women were constantly at risk of rape. Clearly, the Betas had decided that the best way to handle their unwanted Alpha sons was to offer to let them 'train' their Omegá sons and they were justifying this horrific act by claiming it was an act of 'kindness' done for the Omegáres benefit.

The Beta laws, supposedly enacted for the protection of Omegáres, had somehow become a twisted parody in the country he supposedly ruled and when he saw with his own eyes the result of beta interference in that most holy of holies, an Omegá , Adam was filled with righteous anger.

Adam charged his eleven mated sons to form sub packs throughout the Americas and endeavour to restore PackLaw. "We have become too remote," he said. "We need to return to live within the communities we rule and remind them of the true words of the All-father."

"Good luck with that, GAPOTAU," Gabriel said. "Personally I think the American Union of Assholes is past saving. The goddamned Church of Abel has grown so large here that nothing less than a biblical plague is going to sort this shit out. I'm off to Europe with my Omegá. Our pups are going to be born in a civilised country and that is definitely not something I'd call THIS one any longer."

Despite the initial shock at Gabriel's defiant departure, eventually all except three of Adam's sons followed his example and left the Americas to form their packs in countries that were less welcoming of the Beta's progressive Ablest church.

Michael and Lucifer remained, of course, both secretly thrilled that the odds of inheriting Adam's throne had apparently reduced to a two horse race.

Cain also stayed, content to remain with his wife, his bees and his adoring mother, Evan.

It was exactly twelve years later when Adam's pack was shaken to its core by the unbelievable, completely unexpected arrival of an Omegá at their door.

Although he had travelled with an Alpha guardian, as Beta Law demanded, the Alpha made no request for payment on behalf of the Omegá's Beta family, and simply left as soon as he'd delivered the Omegá safely inside the packlands.

The Omegá was surprisingly plain. He had barely a shadow of Evan's beauty and yet he still carried himself like a queen. He demanded an immediate audience with Adam with all the confidence of a royal visitor and the pack, awed by his presence, hastened to comply.

"I am virgin and belong to no man," the Omegá stated firmly, standing with unassailable pride despite his tattered clothing and less than traditional facial features. "The only bride-price required to open my flower will be the worship of my own personal All-Father, Cain Adamson. So it is written, so it will be."

Gently, because the great High Alpha Primá Adam Sethson had always been somewhat unmanned by a dominant Omegá , Adam told the strange young man that Cain had no interest in claiming an Omegá bride.

The Omegá looked at him with a kind but condescending smile and although his face was only conventionally handsome, lacking the more usual almost feminine prettiness of his designation, his huge eyes were Omadonna verdant green and a gold corona sparked around his irises as he said, "Cain Adamson will claim ME. It is written. It will be so."

The flash of gold, which all knew to be the unmistakable mark of a seer, and the quiet certainty of his words convinced Adam he was in the presence of an Omegá speaking words directly from the lips of the Omadonna himself.

He immediately sent for Cain, who arrived with a look of clear displeasure on his face at the summoning.

Then Cain, who had never looked on any Omegá except his mother with anything other than bored indifference, looked at the scruffy, little, plain-faced Omegá and immediately fell heavily to his knees in worship.

"Mine," he growled possessively, although his body remained In a position of supplication as he waited for the Omegá's response.

"Actually, the name's Chuck," the Omegá replied cheerfully. "But I guess 'mine' works too."


	4. Chapter One

Chapter One

 

She saw the car for the first time on an Alfarsday, as she was meandering slowly and reluctantly towards her father's chapel, scuffing the toes of her sensible shoes on the dusty sidewalk, her legs kicking defiantly at the too long skirts of her second best Alfarsday dress.

Perhaps, she decided in retrospect, that was the reason it all happened. It was certainly the moment it began. A blast of strange and unusual colliding with her mundane boring life at the precise time of the week when the temperature of her resentment always boiled at its hottest

She hated the chapel, with its hypocrisy and rhetoric. Hated the way her father, a stern taciturn man at the best of times, turned rabid behind the pulpit against any perceived threat to his narrow, dogmatic belief of how the world should be ordered.

She hated dressing like some demure eighteenth century maid in long skirts, with her usually wildly tumbling blond hair pinned in a tight uncomfortable top knot, portraying some modest spinster virgin as though she wasn't habitually to be found running around in dungarees, wrestling with her brother like a wild hellion, or even skinny-dipping in the nearby river on long hot afternoons when school closed early in the oppressive days of summer. Decorum was not a word anyone would ever associate with her on any other day of the week.

She hated that every word out of her father's mouth poured scorn and derision on the old legends she heard in school and wanted so fervently to believe in. And what she really hated, most of all, was the creeping suspicion that in the sleepy town of Lawrence, where she had been born and would undoubtedly remain, grow old in and die, she would wither and dry under the hot heat of both the climate and the societal pressure, and would become as bitter and ultimately faithless as all the other acrimonious attendees of her father's chapel.

The car was black. Black as sin. Black as the deepest depths of Hell. Not one of those fake blacks of modern cars, the ones that shone metallic purples or reds or blues in sunlight,clothed in the misleading plumage of a crow. No, the car was true black. Old black. And the car also was old, though she knew that was the wrong word choice and the correct one danced out of reach for a moment, then landed into her mind like a swooping bird. Classic. It was a classic muscle car, beautiful, with its polished chrome and sparkling hand-waxed paintwork.

And it idled there, its engine growling; black, shiny, alien, like the body of a huge crouching panther, blocking the route between her home and the chapel so that the only way she could reach her father's sermon of undoubted hellfire and brimstone was if she brushed her body against its gleaming, pulsating flesh. 

#NO. Not flesh. Not flesh. Paintwork.#

Gleaming paintwork. 

The car wasn't a growling, big cat shivering hungrily as it waited to pounce. It was just a hunk of old black metal, vibrating as its engine ran in the dry arid heat.

# It's waiting. Waiting to pounce. Waiting for ME.#

She shook her head at the ridiculous thoughts, so fanciful, so arrogant as though even if the car truly were a demonic beast there would be anything about her, plain boring minister's daughter, Mary Campbell, to draw the attention of such a HellBeast.

# ALPHA #

The word leapt into her mind with an irrational certainty that made her stumble and trip on her long skirts so that she fell to her knees in a heavy, painful mockery of worship.

Ridiculous, of course. In the entire 18 years of her life, Mary had never so much as seen a real life Alpha in the flesh and doubted she ever would. Alphas were something you saw on TV, that you read about in trashy novels, that her father howled about from his pulpit as though they were simultaneously fiendish monsters and yet also the angelic warriors of the All-Father himself. That peculiar dichotomy of her father's faith, as always, escaped her ability to comprehend it.

But an Alpha.

There was absolutely no logical reason why an alpha would be in a boring backwater like Lawrence, Kansas and absolutely not one iota of sense behind Mary's absolute certainty that this black behemoth of a car was being driven by one.

And yet she continued to kneel in the dust, her eyes fixated on the darkened windows like a rabbit frozen in headlights and as the driver's window slowly slid downwards, like the slow opening of a dragon's lazy eyelid, she felt her whole body shiver with frightened expectation.

In that moment time seemed almost to freeze, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled and everything around her fuzzed into a haze so that her entire focus was inexorably fixed on the interior of the dark, throbbing car and the face of the man who was now staring at her from within.

It's a man. Just a man, she told herself, giggling nervously with sudden relief. A dark haired, handsome, slightly swarthy man with dark eyes and a faint shadow of two-day beard framing a strong jaw. 

"Are you okay? Are you hurt?" he asked, his voice deeply masculine yet somehow also as soft and caressing as old leather.

She scrambled clumsily to her feet. "Fine, I'm fine," she gasped, embarrassed now to be acting so childishly in front of the handsome stranger. 

# It's just that, for a moment, I imagined you were an Alpha # she thought, but thankfully managed not to blurt the words out loud.

"Good," he said. "I'd hate to see a pretty girl like you cry."

Then his eyes creased with laughter and he grinned wolfishly. "Unless it was me making you cry, of course. That would be a whole different story." 

And his grin spread into a wide smile and all she could see was the white expanse of his teeth, his pointed, sharp, shark-like teeth, and for a moment his dark eyes flashed as red as fire.

With a yelp of fear she stumbled backwards, then turned and ran in blind terror back towards her house, the Alpha's amused laughter rumbling behind her like the thunder of an approaching storm.


	5. Chapter Two

The Cain-Crowley building towered over the downtown of the metropolis of Detroit. Wider and higher than any other tower block in the city, it stood as a gleaming black glass and metal obelisk, proud and unashamed in an unmistakable phallic testament to the wealth, power and influence of the uber Pack which owned it.

Locally, to Fergus Crowley's endless irritation, it was known colloquially as Cain's Cock because no matter how much Crowley liked to throw his Alpha weight around, self-styling himself as King of the City, everyone knew that his silent partner, Cain Adamson, was the ultimate power behind Cain-Crowley's success.

Crowley had taken full advantage of the lucky accident of birth that had not only gifted him with Alpha genitals but also, unusually, the clever bright intelligence more commonly found in Betas. It was a potent combination of abilities that he had wielded from the moment of his presentation until he had become the most important Free Alpha in Michigan.

Of course, it had admittedly helped his meteoric rise that his mother was Rowena Crowley, one of the most infamous, influential betas in the whole American Union. Rowena had the possibly unfair reputation of being somewhat of a black widow since each of her seven husbands had died, one after the other, in a series of peculiar illnesses and accidents. Whether that had been unfortunate co-incidence or something more sinister was a subject of great public speculation but no one had ever been able to prove any foul-play and, since Rowena was a beautiful, clever and, perhaps, conniving woman, it just so happened that she had always married men of considerably substantial means.

She had also, co-incidentally or by design, whelped a single male Beta pup to each of her first six husbands and those boys had inherited everything from their sadly deceased fathers that the pesky nonsense of pre-marital agreements had denied Rowena from getting her hands on directly.

With little Fergus, however, the pup of her last husband, she had hit the jackpot.

At the unusually precocious age of ten, Fergus had presented as an Alpha and because of the antiquated pack inheritance laws that the Beta government had still so far failed to overturn despite their best efforts, Fergus had immediately disinherited all of his Beta brothers and had taken ownership of everything. Naturally, Rowena had immediately terminated all contact with her Beta offspring and henceforth centered all of her maternal love on 'My wee boy, Fergus."

Even at the tender age of 10, Fergus had been wise to his mother's machinations and knew her affections could be precisely measured in dollars and cents, but it still suited him to keep her close. He had no intention of being the victim of the eighth tragic fatality in his mother's immediate family.

At university, Fergus had chosen to study law purely because he was clever enough to see that in the political atmosphere that had developed since the mistake of Beta suffrage, the most likely threat to his comfortable position would come from Beta courts, rather than poison or bullets. (Well, unless he crossed his mother, of course).

At the age of twenty five, Fergus, now choosing to be known simply as Crowley, had solidified his position by offering his allegiance to the Alpha Primá of the Pack that ruled the united states, Cain.

On the death of Adam, Cain had inherited rulership of the entire American Union but had politically chosen to divide the territory into three, handing Canada to Michael and everything South of Texas to Lucifer, so now three uber Packs existed to govern the lesser Packs in a powerful triumverate.

Crowley had chosen to align with Cain primarily because the United States was the cradle of the triumvirate but, admittedly, he also preferred the weather there over the cold of Canada or the heat of the southern countries. He'd holidayed in Brazil once and his stomach was in little hurry to repeat the experience.

Cain was not a lawyer himself but was easily persuaded by Crowley that the law was the best battle ground upon which to fight the increasing Beta threat to the packs. It was Cain who provided the money to build a vast edifice, fill it with a few smart Alphas and a myriad of Beta lawyers of more liberal persuasions, and slowly and carefully Cain-Crowley had begun to rock the foundations on which the militant fundamental Betas were attempting to build their power base.

As an Alpha himself, Crowley was personally motivated to circumvent the Betas' inexorable path toward designation-cleansing, but the fact his personal self serving actions aligned with Cain's desires was merely a mutual convenience. There was little love lost between the pair of them and it was not a co-incidence that the Cain-Crowley building was located over a thousand miles from the packlands where Cain made his home. It suited both of them that they rarely had occasion to meet with each other.

Crowley was nothing if not a practical man. Whilst he endeavoured tirelessly to derail the Beta agenda, like most Alphas born outside of a pack he held little belief in the idea there was anything more spiritual in an Omegá's cunt than that of a Beta. Truth be told, he thought Cain was a bit of a fool.

Crowley really couldn't understand why the Alpha Primá cared whether Omegáres were pre-used by Alphas or not. Personally Crowley thought the acquisition of a well trained sex-slave should appeal far more than the buying of a blushing virgin bride. He personally had been known to dip his cock now and then into an available Omegá's flower figuring that, once they were no longer virgins, there was no point crying over spilt milk, and he'd never felt any need to complain about the experience.

Still, it appeared that all the Alpha Primáres felt so strongly about it that some refused to mate at all if their proposed Omegá was used-goods, and if the Alpha Primáres didn't breed, that would spell the end of the Packs and that would be game over for Alphas like Crowley too.

So Crowley worked dilegently to limit the ambitions of the Betas and took it as a personal failure when he failed to prevent the previously illegal practice of docking being passed into law by the Senate, hidden so deeply inside a vast, thousand page new Public Health Bill that none of Crowley's lawyers noticed the presence of that one insidious clause until it was too late to oppose it.


	6. Chapter Three

The second time Mary saw the car it was a Lunesday and she was leaving school with a gaggle of girlfriends when she spied the black leviathan parked in front of the ministry. Dark and silent as they approached, it at first appeared unoccupied. But as soon as they passed the car, its throttle was opened and it growled like a hungry beast. Her steps faltered and she flushed hot with adrenaline, briefly uncertain whether to run away or stand her ground and confront the devil inside it.

None of the other girls noticed her hesitation although, naturally, a couple of them exclaimed in surprise at the beauty and strangeness of the classic car. Nothing quite like it had ever been seen in Lawrence before. 

As the group reached the end of the street, Mary glanced back over her shoulder and saw the Alpha had climbed out of his car and was slouched carelessly against the driver's door and, as his eyes met hers, he coolly smirked his shark-like grin, raised his hand and indolently tipped an imaginary hat in her direction.

For the next four days the black car seemed to follow her to and from school, creeping slowly down every road she walked along, purring in low menace, its ocupant hidden behind the tinted side windows although, whenever Mary risked a sideways glance, she was sure she saw a flash of red deep inside the opaque glass as though a match was being struck although, unless the driver was a constant chain smoker, it was more likely the red flares were phosphorous flashes from the Alpha's hungry eyes.

On Farasday evening, after school finished for the week, the car waited directly outside the school gates, pointing in the direction of her home, its passenger door slightly ajar in what seemed to Mary like a silent invitation to her, and to her alone.

She hurried past, rushing away from the perceived threat as though hell hounds were on her tail, and she swore she heard a chuckle of rumbling laughter in her wake.

The next morning at breakfast, her father, Samuel Campbell, First Minister of the Lawrence Church of Abel, broke his own rule of no speaking at the table and announced, "There's an Alpha in town. His name is John Winchester. Apparently he was a decorated marine during the last Asiatic War and the town council, in their wisdom, have apparently appointed him to be the new town sheriff."

Mary's older brother Chris startled visibly. "I thought Jacob was in line to be the next sheriff," he said, running his fingers distractedly through his overlong, dirty blond hair.

"Sucks to be you," Mary chuckled. It was well known in Lawrence that Deputy Jacob Kruger had a tendency to turn a blind eye to the youthful indiscretions of Chris and his cronies. Jacob's philosophy was that boys would be boys and, as long as no people or property were actually damaged, there was no point taking a hard line on normal teenage behaviour.

Samuel, being more of a disciplinarian at heart even if he had given up wasting his breath trying to control Chris's behaviour himself, had been campaigning for a more robust legal presence. It seemed, to Mary, this campaign had come back to bite him on the ass though, since it was well-known that the thing Samuel Campbell hated more than any amount of teenage high jinks was the existence of an actual flesh and blood Alpha.

"I'm surprised," her mother Deanna said, pursing her lips with clear disapproval at the prospect.

Although Deanna was purportedly more liberal than her husband, blunting the edges of his sometimes fanatical opinions with a more down-to-earth pragmatic approach, like many liberals there was a divide between what she professed to believe and what she actually cared to live with. Deanna had no objection in principle to the existence of designations other than Betas, she just didn't want to be neighbours with any of them.

Though Samuel's bigotry angered Mary, it was at least honest. Deanna's nimby hypocrisy actually irritated Mary more.

"Lawrence is a civilised town," Deanna continued. "Of course this John Winchester fellow has every right to live here," she said, with a barely perceptible shudder of distaste, "but I honestly can't see any reason why he would want to."

Samuel grunted his agreement. "No one is actually happy, about it, obviously, but he's a decade past the risk of rut rage, so there's that, at least, and besides, for some reason this Winchester has arrived in town and is insisting on staying here whether we like it or not, so the council feels that if we are going to have to put up with his presence we may as well benefit from it."

"Alphas are well-suited to law enforcement," Deanna allowed, "but this is a quiet town. We hardly need such a blunt instrument here to keep the peace. I can't see an Alpha getting much satisfaction out of handing out the odd speeding ticket or rounding up our one town drunk on a Farasday night."

"Well, at least you'll have to stop that infernal drag racing you boys do down the mall on Verdesday nIghts," Samuel told Chris, with a degree of satisfaction. "I can't see an Alpha letting you off without a ticket like that wet milksop Jacob."

"He'll have to catch me first," Chris laughed, with the braggart confidence of any teenage boy with a stupidly fast car. Lawrence High School, being somewhat progressive, had introduced an advanced motor shop programme the previous year with the unfortunate side-effect that every youth with a car now seemed obsessed with tweaking their engines to increase the horsepower of their vehicles.

"I don't think catching you will be a problem," Mary mocked. "I've seen HIS car. It's as black as a hellhound and twice as fast."

Samuel turned so swiftly in his seat that he nearly knocked his coffee over. "And when, Mary Sharon Campbell did YOU see the Alpha's car. Has he already come sniffing at you like a horny dog? I knew it. Knew he'd be trouble."

"Don't be ridiculous, daddy. I've never met him. I didn't even know he was an Alpha before you just said so," she lied. "But surely everyone in town has noticed that gorgeous car."

"Ohhh," Chris gasped. "That huge black muscle car I've seen around town the last week or so. That's his? It's cherry. Me and the guys assumed it belonged to some rich Beta compensating for a small dick, but if he's an Alpha it's definitely not compensation."

"There will be no talk of dicks at this table," Samuel snapped angrily. He turned his attention back to his daughter. "Stay clear of him, Mary," Samuel demanded. "Alphas are dangerous. I know young girls like you read trashy novels with alphas portrayed as misunderstood romantic heroes but Alphas are barely-human throwbacks that sniff after good Beta girls like you like feral wolves. One day we'll find a way of eradicating the Alpha gene entirely, All-Father willing. Until then heed my words, Mary. Never ever get within scenting distance of an Alpha."

"I guess I'd better not do anything to get myself arrested for then," Mary quipped.

"This is not a joking matter," Samuel thundered. "Stay away from that...beast." Then he frowned in deep contemplation for a moment before stating, "I need to revise tomorrow's sermon to address this issue. Remind all of you young girls of the words of Abel regarding the necessity to guard against the danger of Alphas in these perilous times until the blessed Rapture from whenceforth only Betas will walk the earth."

Or maybe, Mary pondered in retrospect, THAT was the reason it happened because it was in that moment, faced with her father's awful bigotry, that she decided her former fear of John Winchester was totally unreasonable. The most handsome, mysterious man Mary had ever seen, who was clearly interested in her own unremarkable, boring self, and she was allowing the bigoted teachings of her father to dictate her reaction to the intriguing Alpha.

Mary was an educated girl. She knew Alphas weren't sub-human beasts like her father preached. Alphas had been created by the All-Father to be the protectors of their packs. The All-Father's son, Adam, had been an Alpha himself, albeit, obviously, the original Alpha Primá and everyone knew that Alpa Primáres made ordinary Alphas like John Winchester seem no more dangerous than pups playing at being top-dogs.

Mary Campbell was too smart to waste her breath arguing with her father. His dogma was firm and unyielding. In his world there was no place for anything except Betas. Hell, if the Omadonna himself came down from heaven and presented his flower to Samuel Campbell, Mary had no doubt the minister would wrinkle his nose in disgust.

So she said nothing, merely nodding her head in acquiescence and sitting demurely at her father's table like a good little Beta girl.

Next time, she decided. 

Next time the black beast car rumbled up alongside her and purred in invitation, she would climb inside.


	7. Chapter Four

Everyone in the USA knew that the Grandé Alpha Primá Cain was the true leader of the free world.

Admittedly, every five years the Free Betas of the United States of America huddled together and democratically elected a President (from Beta only candidates, naturally) who then paraded himself around the Senate, pretending he was in charge. 

But, despite all of their drum-banging and flag-waving, every Free Beta knew that unless a way was found to erradicate the Packs who legally owned the land they rented upon which they had created their supposedly democratic society, they were essentially no more than children playing at self-governance. Nothing more than a single deliberately expelled waft of scent from Caine's throat was needed to instantly reduce any Beta, even one who styled himself as POTUS, to a quivering heap, pissing himself in terror in front of the whole world.

It was biology.

Betas were absolutely, fundamentally and unavoidably cowed by all Alpha Primáres.

It was a source of great consternation and the reason so many Betas hated the other more well-blessed designations. 

Although standard Alphas were physically stronger than any Beta, they lacked the pheromones to dominate by scent alone, but Alpha Primáres were a different beast entirely. Alpha Primáres had undisputably superhuman powers and had been created, by the All-Father himself, as the ultimate predator. Cain Adamson, as Grandé Alpha Primá, commanded the allegiance of all Alpha Primáres in America and, by extension, the loyalties of all their packmembers.

And yes, it was true that the percentage of pack members numbered in total less than 10% of the total population (even including the numerous Betas who chose to live under PackLaw and were seen, at best, as weak and, at worst, as collaborators) and the independent Free Betas consequently outnumbered the packs 10 to 1, but the economics of the situation were converse. The packs controlled almost 90% of the country's wealth. Almost all of the 'independent' Free Betas worked in companies owned, ultimately, by the packs. The government, though fully Beta, was funded totally by taxes paid by people employed by non-Betas.

Consequently almost every law the Beta Senate attempted to pass to disenfranchise the packs was just as quickly derailed by Pack Lawyers, mainly working for Cain-Crowley, who were supported by Beta Senators who feared losing their seats if their voting public lost their jobs in an act of Pack vengeance.

So for two decades the uneasy status quo had continued as every step forward by the Betas had been violently pushed back by Crowley's lawyers in a zero-sum game of legal shenanigans. Ever since the terrible mistake that had enabled the docking of Omegáres to pass into law, it had been more than any of Cain-Crowley's lawyers lives were worth to allow such a terible cock-up to be repeated.

Yet, inexorably, if gradually, the Betas were convinced they were still winning the war, even if they retreated from every legal battle blooded and bruised. They were winning because they had control of the one thing the Packs could not survive without; Omegáres.

Of course, they had to be careful. Thousands of years of religious teachings had established Omegáres as holy beings and religion was one of the few things that had the power to convince people of all designations to set aside their own self interest. Despite it being absolutely evident fact to some Betas that all Betas would be better off if they were the ruling (or preferably SOLE) designation, far too many of the ordinary Betas were too faithful to their religion to act in their own best interest.

The few Betas ambitious enough to take positions of power after the Beta revolution in 1763, had decided that the only way to truly change the situation was to change the religion. It was done so slowly that it was almost imperceptible. A word re-translated here or there from the original All-Father Testament. A passage lost or added to each new printed edition of the Holy Book. An infernally slow process that had been started three centuries earlier and given a huge adrenalin boost by the discovery of 'The Abel Tablet' which was finally beginning to bear ripe fruit in the Church of Abel.

The Church had already been rising in ascendency during the reign of Adam Sethson and had settled itself inexorably into the American Free Beta psyche by the time Cain inherited his pack.

Michael and Lucifer had both chosen to take an agressive stance against the new religion. In Canada a new PackLaw forbade the holding of religious meetings on Pack-owned land. This resulted, not unsurprisingly, in the Church of Abel being driven underground where it proceeded to breed even more quickly, like an insidious virus. Lucifer took a more direct approach, ordering all the Pack-owned Printing Presses in South America and Mexico to be razed to the ground. This simply cleared the field for the small, non-pack-owned Publishers to dominate the market and was somewhat of a financial disaster for Lucifer's Pack.

Cain, always more level headed than either of his brothers, believed a hands off approach was the best way to handle the religious side of the problem because flexing power over the Betas was just putting oil on the fire of their resentment. He left the Free Betas in the US alone, assuming common sense and education would prevail over dodgy religious dogma, except for one memorable occasion when he marched into Senate in a near feral rage when the Betas had actually dared to put a motion to the vote suggesting that their entire national school curriculum should be changed to remove any teachings that did not strictly adhere to the 'Abel Tablet'. In his fury he had reduced every single Beta present to a state of sobbing, cowering apology. It had taken two weeks to eradicate the stench of urine from the seating areas.

Generally, though, Cain stayed out of the Free Beta's affairs and was rarely seen in public.

He leant his name, wealth and authority to Alphas such as Crowley to ensure oversight of the developing Beta Laws, but otherwise was a private person who eschewed publicity.

In the way of things, his decision not to interfere directly simply made him more mysterious and dangerous to the Betas. He was perceived as a much greater threat because the Betas assumed the very fact he was so apparently disinterested really meant he was secretly plotting against them.

The simple truth was that, most of the time, Cain barely even wasted energy wondering about the machinations of the betas. He was far more interested in his hobby of beekeeping and what he considered his full-time job, that of keeping both Chuck and Colette happy.


	8. Chapter Five

The black car was waiting for her as she left chapel the next morning, her cheeks flushed hot with temper at the diatribe against the evils of Alphas that her father had launched from his pulpit.

Where most of the gathered congregation had nodded their agreement with Samuel Campbell's vicious denoument, Mary had felt herself growing more and more irate as the lecture continued. How dare he, she seethed internally. How dare he stand there and pronounce that the All-Father had decided he had made a terrible mistake in creating the Alphas and had proven his contrition for that error by guiding a prophet to write the Abel Tablet.

The All-Father was omniscient. The All-Father was the creator of all things. The All-Father was GOD. God didn't make mistakes!

Unless you considered the error of letting damned uppity Betas like her father spout his nonsense in a so-called House Of God and failing to strike him down on the spot with a bolt of lightning.

She grabbed the handle of the car's front passenger door, noting it was already slightly ajar, and moving with too much temper for any hesitation, she dipped down into the car, seated herself and slammed the door shut behind her before turning to face the driver and spitting, 'I don't care you're a bloody Alpha but if you don't put your foot down and get me out of here, your first job as Sheriff might be arresting me for punching them all in their smug, pious faces!"

John Winchester stared at her for a moment in clear disbelief, then threw back his head and laughed with delight. 

"And where would you like me to take you, Ma'am?" he asked, in a deep whisky voice that sent a thrill down her spine and a flash of warmth into her groin, even as he knocked the car into gear and set off down the road so fast they left a cloud of dust behind them.

"My name's Mary," she said. "As I'm sure you already know. And I don't care where we go. Just somewhere that isn't here."

He drove silently for a few minutes, then said, "Do you want to go home first? Get changed?"

Mary chuckled, raising her hand to her hair and releasing it from the pins that held it so that it fell free almost to her waist. "I'm wearing shorts and t-shirt under this crappy dress," she laughed. Then, boldly, she added, "and new knickers."

He grinned his hungry, wolfish smile. "You were that sure I would be waiting for you today?" he challenged.

She turned in her seat so she could look him straight in the eye. "I have the distinct feeling, John Winchester, that you're a man who always gets what he wants and, unless I'm mistaken, I think that what you currently want is ME."

Something sparked deep and red inside his eyes and he growled softly. "What if I said it was more than just 'currently'. What if I said I saw you last Alfarsday and told myself that's the woman I want to mate with. Have pups with. What if I said the only reason I stayed in this Godforsaken town and bullied my way into a job and a house was to spread your legs and fill your cunt with my pups? What would you say to THAT, Mary Campbell?"

Mary was a Minister's daughter. A good, well-bred Beta girl who automatically flushed scarlet at the profanity.

But she also licked her lips.

There was something so damned sexy about his unashamed blunt honesty and the contrast between his simple statement of truth compared to the hypocrital shit she had just suffered listening to for a two hour sermon solidified her resolve.

"I'd say I hope the Sheriff's house comes with a big, darned comfortable bed," she responded, raising her chin in challenge.

John Winchester grinned so wide his teeth glistened like razors.

"It's big," he promised, though Mary suspected he wasn't just referring to the bed.

"I'm a virgin," she confessed, feeling oddly ashamed of admitting something that she had priorly believed a source of pride.

"Well, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pleased about that," John said, his eyes flashing a red corona of possessive greed, "but I regret if for your sake. Taking an alpha cock is not the kindest way to breach your hymen. It would be better for you if you'd been fucked by a Beta boy first."

"Are Alphas really as big as they say?"

John laughed at her, "Well, think of an Omegá, the tiny little cock they have, half the size of your littlest finger. I'm sure you've seen an illustration of the Omadonna."

"My father belongs to the Church of Abel. In all illustrations inside the New Revised Testament of Abel, the Omadonna is portrayed as docked," Mary replied primly, but then winked. "However, my biology teacher is a scientist, rather than a zealot, so I do know what they actually look like before docking. Kind of cute, really."

"Did your science teacher tell you Beta cocks are at least five or six times bigger than those of Omegáres?"

Mary flushed with embarrassment but nodded again.

"Even the smallest Alpha is twice the size of a Beta and trust me, Mary, I'm not the smallest Alpha," he said pridefully.

"But Alpha Primáres are substantially bigger than any Alpha, aren't they? And they form knots," Mary pointed out, deliberately stabbing at his ego a little.

He just laughed again.

"Well, Mary, Unless you're hiding an Omegáres rose under that skirt be damned glad I'm not an Alpha Primá, because a Primá's cock would rip you in two."


	9. Chapter Six

Although Cain adored his Omegá mate and worshipped at his altar with frequent enthusiasm, Chuck whelped only five pups. The first three were Alpha Primáres like their father and the fourth pup was an Alpha.

Then the couple suffered five childless years and Cain worried his mate had become barren. He wasn't personally concerned as he did not share his father's urge to procreate like a rabbit but he knew barrenness was often distressing to Omegáres and he feared for his mate's feelings on the matter. However, Chuck remained placidly content, assuring him, "One is yet to come. He's simply taking his time getting here. When the time is right, he will come."

"I don't understand," Cain admitted. "What does the time need to be right for?"

Chuck shrugged. "Things need to happen first, I guess. I know what I know but I don't know what I don't yet know," he said cryptically. "I'm pretty sure the time is almost right, though."

The following Spring, as predicted, Chuck whelped his fifth and final pup.

When the blue eyed pup was born with a shock of dark hair and significantly oversized genitals, Colette, acting as midwife, excitedly announced "It's another Primá."

Chuck smiled beatifically. "His name is Castiel," he said, quietly, and Colette was shocked because the Omegá had never before used his naming prerogative and had disinterestedly left the naming of his previous pups to Cain.

"Is he the one?" Colette asked nervously. "The one whose coming Evan spoke of? Is it truly the End of Days?"

"I don't know," Chuck replied. His brow furrowed in confusion for a moment, then his eyes flashed gold. "His name is Castiel, the shield of God, the protector of the Omadonna, and one day he will be best known as the Casfather."

The words struck fear and awe in the Beta but she clutched the pup protectively, worried what pressure the public knowledge of such expectations would exert on such a tiny child.

Chuck's eyes faded back to green, he shook himself like a wet dog and then looked at Colette in apparent confusion. "Sorry. What did you ask me?"

Colette smiled gently. "Nothing, sweetheart. Nothing important."

Cain decided to take action to avoid the unpleasantness he himself had suffered on Adam's death, having been forced to either split his territory or put his brothers to death because there was no way either Michael or Lucifer would have sworn allegiance to him.

Fortunately, the sheer overwhelming size of his own inheritance had made the choice easy. The division of the vast American Union into three had actually made governing the lesser packs a more manageable prospect. Still, rather than risk any of his pups being faced with the same dilemma, he decided to divide the 52 United States into five separate smaller packlands. He kept 10 states for himself, gave ten states each to his three eldest pups, and he gifted the remaining 12, the Mid West states, to his youngest, Castiel. 

Obviously the pups would not inherit until they were old enough to form their own packs, but Cain acted promptly to put the legalities in place to ensure smooth transitions when his pups reached maturity. Chuck told him it was crucial that he didn't leave the pack division until after his own death.

Cain had learned not to question Chuck when the golden light of the Omadonna was dancing in his eyes.

Since Cain-Crowley handled the legalities of the division of the Uber Pack into its five parts, it did not skip Crowley's attention that by giving Michigan to Castiel, effectively Cain had just passed Crowley's allegiance from himself to his infant son.

"What makes you so sure I'll bend my knee to your pup?" he sneered.

Instead of reacting to the challenge with anger, Cain just smirked. "Chuck told me to do it," he said. "Chuck says, the time will come when your allegiance to Castiel will have a crucial part to play in what will unfold."

"What does he mean by that?" Crowley demanded uneasily.

Cain shrugged. "Who knows? Sometimes it feels to me as though he's holding a vast chessboard in his head and he's slowly moving chess pieces into position ready for battle. Only the All-Father could possibly know what piece someone like you are supposed to represent."

Crowley, who usually liked to pretend to be beyond superstition, visibly squeezed his own cock in a gesture of reverence to the All-Father. "He's had a vision about ME specifically?"

Cain nodded. "He's had a number of disturbing visions lately, Crowley. You're the least of them."

No one else dared question the uneven division but if they had Cain would probably have unapologetically said it was because he liked his youngest son best.

Which was true but, honestly, he did it that way simply because his Omegá wanted him to and Cain never had managed to refuse the mother of his children anything he asked for.


	10. Chapter Seven

"I'm pregnant," Mary announced calmly at breakfast on the third Lecheday of Lunastres, the third month of Spring.

Deanna choked on her orange juice, Chris dropped his fork with a clatter and her father turned a peculiar shade of purple.

"It's John Winchester's pup," Mary continued evenly. "And obviously we need to be mated before it shows because me having an Alpha’s bastard pup would be hell of a lot worse in your congregation’s eyes than the scandal of me simply marrying one, so the only question, daddy, is whether you want to perform the ceremony yourself or whether we need to find a different Minister to bless our union.”

"Wow,"Chris muttered. "How the hell did a skinny thing like you manage to fit an Alpha cock in your cunt?"

“Watch your language at the table, boy.” Samuel snapped. 

Chris made an exaggerated moue of disbelief. “You’re honestly more concerned about me swearing than Mary getting herself knocked up by an Alpha? Alfarsdays are going to be interesting from now on. You’ll spend all morning preaching the evils of Alphas to your congregation, then come home to eat family dinner with your Alpha son-in-law. Let’s see who’ll be spouting the profanity at this table then,” he mocked.

"That creature is never setting foot in my church or my house," Samuel thundered. “As for you, Mary, I’d suggest a third far wiser option of simply having that abomination’s spawn scraped out of you. Otherwise, as far as I’m concerned, I have no daughter.”

Although Deanna had barely recovered from the shock of Mary’s announcement, she stiffened in fury at her husband’s callous words.

"The pup will be a Beta," Deanna reminded him sternly. "You will not suggest murdering our grandpup, Samuel, regardless of its unfortunate Sire. Neither will you force our grandpup to grow up a bastard, just because Mary has been stupid and immature enough to be seduced by an Alpha. Nor will you cast out our daughter for falling for that creature's wiles. 

“You have been preaching long enough that the very danger of Alphas living within our communities is their ability to seduce naive Beta Girls to ensure their genes are carried into the next generations. Mary might have shown some particularly poor judgement but she is the victim of this man, not his partner in crime.”

“There has been no damned crime,” Mary snapped. “Two consenting adults have fallen in love, are having a pup together and want to get married. How the hell can that be a crime?”

“I’ll tell you what the crime is,” Samuel snarled. “That I have fed you, clothed you, housed you and raised you to know the words of the Holy Book for eighteen years and within two months of a damned Alpha coming to town you have dropped your panties and opened your legs for him like a common harlot. I will ensure he is fired and driven out of this town for this, Mary, and you can pack your bags and go with him if you are gullible enough to believe his professed ‘love’ but you’ll be back here with your tail between your legs before your pup stops suckling on your tit because, mark my words, Alphas don’t settle down and get married and stay faithful to their mates like Betas. They keep sniffing after new willing whores to plant their seed in.”

“Alphas mate for life, just like Betas,” Mary argued. “Please, Daddy. Can’t you, just for once, put aside your preaching hat and just try to understand that John is simply a man, a man I love, and try to accept him for my sake?”

“Never,” Samuel said firmly, his expression cold and unyeilding. “The All-Father himself stated that all designations other than Betas were an experiment that failed and just as they are no longer welcome in Heaven, they will also be eradicated from existence on Earth.”

“That was not stated in any copy of the Testament that I have ever read,” Mary snapped, “and you made me read the Testament from cover to cover enough times that I should know.”

“Oh, it’s in the latest new NEW abridged version of The Testament of Abel, Sis,” Chris said, with a chuckle. “Apparently, the Abel Tablet has been retranslated yet again. Maybe this time they actually got it right.”

Before Samuel could be diverted into a long-winded explanation of why the Testament had been recently retranslated for the ninth time, Deanna interrupted;

“This is all irrelevant now. Mary is pregnant. Whether we like it or not, John Winchester is the Sire. You will not get him fired, Samuel. He will need to keep a roof over his family’s head and you will perform their mating ceremony. But," she said, fixing an implacable expression of disapproval on Mary, "whilst you and your pup will be welcome in our home, do not ever bring that Alpha to my doorstep. Your father is right. He will never be welcomed within this house."

“John is a man, no different from any other man,” Mary argued hotly. “He has an extra gene, that’s all. How can you blame him for an accident of birth? Would you be as biased if he were born disabled?”

"No different except for the fact he has a giant cock and automatically was offered the job he wanted, just because of his status, when poor Jacob has been this town’s deputy for five years and should have been first in line for the position," Chris argued.

"I will have no more talk of cocks at this table," Samuel roared but still nodded his agreement with his son about Jacob. "Even in these enlightened times, still Alphas demand preferential treatment. They despoil our daughters. They automatically inherit, regardless of how many beta siblings are born before them, and they are offered any position of authority they demand. 

"But times are changing, new laws are being developed to overturn the intrinsic unfairness of the old PackLaw. The word of the Church of Abel is gaining ascendency in every civilised country and one day soon, there will be no more beasts like John Winchester to steal our daughters."

He looked at Mary. "I will not marry you in the All-Father's house, but," he added, before Deanna could protest again, "I will speak to the town council and arrange for a civil ceremony to be performed with haste. I suggest you pack your bags and move into the sheriff’s house tonight. It's a little too late to worry about you remaining a virgin until marriage."

"Fine," Mary spat. 

"Besides," Samuel said, "he won't stay. He'll tire of you soon enough and find another willing cunt to stick his cock in. That's what Alphas do. Knock naive beta girls up and abandon them."

"So much for not mentioning cocks at the table," Chris muttered.

Mary stood and faced her father with dignity. "John loves me, father, and I love him. You are completely wrong about him and about Alphas in general and we will prove it to you."

Then, deciding the news had actually gone down better than she had expected, she retreated to her bedroom to pack her suitcase.


	11. Chapter Eight

Castiel was five years old when he first met his Uncle Lucifer.

It was common knowledge that Omagáres and Primáres had far longer lifespans than other designations, so it was not a surprise that Lucifer, who was in his late 60's, still looked like a man half his age. What did surprise Castiel was that whilst his own BetaMother, Colette, was clearly in late middle age; grey haired and softly wrinkled, Lucifer's Beta Wife looked barely as old as Castiel's OmegáMother, Chuck.

Lucifer's apparently new Beta Wife, Lilith, wasn't the only surprise although it was Cain who commented, rather than Castiel, as the pup had never met Lucifer's Omegá before so had no inkling anything was wrong until his father thundered, "Where is Aamon? Who is this strange Omegá you bring here, clearly heavy with pup?"

The Omegá flinched and paled at Cain's question but Chuck hurried to his side to assure him it was not HE towards whom Cain directed his ire. 

Lucifer smirked. "This, dear brother, is my new Omegá bride, Ravan, who as you can see is soon to whelp me a new son. As for Aamon, he is safe and well. There is no reason to worry for him."

Cain shook his head in disbelief. "A Primá cannot divide his worship between two altars, Lucifer. It is against every tenet of the All-Father."

Lucifer laughed and shrugged carelessly. "I break no PackLaw, Cain. Aamon has been retired from my Pack. My mating bite cannot be removed from him, of course, but since he is barren now that is of no import."

From the gasps of the gathered members of Cain's Pack, it was clear to Castiel that this statement had caused great shock to the adults but he was too young to fully grasp the conversation he was listening to.

"You have severed your mating bond with Aamon because he is barren?" Cain asked, casting a worried glance towards Chuck as though fearing his beloved (who now was also barren) would take Lucifer's terrible action as an indication Cain might someday do the same thing.

"We are at war, Cain. It's a war of attrition and some of the greatest weapons in my arsenal against the Beta threat are sitting in my ball sac. I'm hardly going to waste my bullets by shooting them into a barren Omegá . It is my duty as the Grandé Alpha Primá of the South Americas to produce as many sons as possible and if that means I have to change Omegáres a few times, well, that's the price I'm willing to pay."

"Where is Aamon?" Cain demanded coldly.

"I have created a Retirement Village in Mexico specifically for barren or widowed Omegáres," Lucifer replied blithely. "It's a wonderful place. Every Omegá has their own private villa and there are well trained Beta Nurses and Staff to attend them and care for them with dignity and respect. It's a long overdue solution for an age-old problem. Perhaps if it had existed before, our mother Evan would still be alive."

Cain flinched. He had still not recovered from the fact his beloved mother had chosen to commit suicide after the death of Adam rather than be relegated to the role of Dowager Omegá .

"My part in the Omadonna's story is over," he had told Cain. "Your father is waiting for me in our personal heaven and I do not wish to keep him waiting for me any longer. This world has no place for a widowed Omegá ." And on the next full moon he had performed the ancient rituals, drunk a draught of poison and had departed to rejoin his adored Adam.

Closing his eyes against his remembered grief, Cain nodded his reluctant agreement. A special place for widowed Omegáres did, indeed, seem a sensible thing. Sending a barren one there was, however, a different story in his opinion. "Am I supposed to believe that Aamon chose to leave you?" he demanded, his voice dripping with disbelief.

"Of course he didn't WANT to go," Lucifer agreed easily enough. "But he understood the sad necessity and, I swear to you, brother, the light of the Omadonna was in his eyes when he finally agreed to free me from our bond."

Cain saw no deception in Lucifer's face, though his gut still twisted uncomfortably at the idea, and he decided that if the Omadonna himself had approved Lucifer's choice then it was not his place to argue with it.

"Your new bride, Ravan, is beautiful," he allowed.

"His face is beautiful enough," Lucifer agreed, "and his womb is fertile, which is of the greatest import, but sadly he was victim to the Betas' perversions and he is docked."

"Obviously I have heard of the vile practice," Cain growled, "but have never seen the result of it with my own eyes."

"Show my brother your mutilated pussy, Ravan, so he can see with his own eyes the evil that we are at war against," Lucifer demanded imperiously.

His Omegá flushed with obvious embarrasment but raised his chin proudly and, though his hands trembled a little, he did not hesitate to release the drawstring of his pants and let them drop to the floor to reveal his naked genital area.

A gasp of dismay echoed around Cain's Pack as they looked at the evidence of Ravan's castration.

"It has no effect on his fertility, obviously, but it is a horrific mutilation of his body," Lucifer announced conversationally. "I actually bought Ravan for my son, Moloch, but the idiot took one look at that scar and his cock withered to the size of a Beta's and he refused to mate with him. I told him to just turn him around and mount him from behind but apparently he couldn't get his cock to do it that way either. I didn't want to waste the money I'd spent, so I retired Aamon and mated Ravan myself. His disfigurement doesn't bother me. My cock's never been interested in anything other than an Omegá's flower anyway."

Little Castiel, seeing the half-naked Omegá's body shivering in humiliated distress in contrast to the proud expression of defiance on his face, stepped forwards, his eyes brimming with tears of empathy. Though he had no true understanding of what he was looking at, the vivid red scar at the base of Ravan's pubic mound was instinctively as repellent to him as it was to all the other Pack members present but, unlike them, his reaction was not to turn away in horror but to approach the mutilated Omegá and ask, quietly, his eyes dark with concern, "Does it hurt?"

Ravan's expression softened as he looked down at the look of worry on the face of the tiny, solemn Primá pup.

"Only in my heart, little prince," he replied. "Only in my heart."


	12. Chapter Nine

"I don't care how apparently charming and good-looking he is," Samuel Campbell said, whenever anyone mentioned his new son-in law. "Alphas are a genetic throwback and inherently unstable. I couldn't stop her marrying that abomination but I sure as hell forbade him from ever entering my house."

At first he was treated with understanding but, to his considerable personal distress, as time passed his words progressively fell on unsympathetic ears even amongst many of the faithful members of his congregation.

To the surprise of most of the residents of Lawrence (and the supreme irritation of Samuel Campbell) John Winchester soon proved to be a stellar addition to the community and an excellent Sheriff. 

Whilst he had a somewhat black and white morality (in many ways, some people whispered, he and Campbell were strikingly alike. Just two-sides of the same coin in their rigid application of the Law) he was fundamentally a fair and just man who dealt sympathetically with minor infractions whilst striking like a hammer on any more serious criminal activity. Whether it was some fundamental aspect of his designation or some inate instinct of the man himself, John Winchester always seemed to sense trouble before it even happened and he'd be there, his dark, dangerous presence enough in itself to prevent the infraction taking place. The people of Lawrence soon found themselves feeling so safe in their community that they reverted to the old fashioned practice of rarely even bothering to lock their front doors.

Visitors to their sleepy town were always intercepted on arrival and advised that no 'big city' behaviours were welcome and if they didn't like that, then head off back from whence they came. The words were always delivered in a polite tone, with a wide, friendly smile by the sharp-toothed Sheriff.

He also exhibited a supreme confidence in himself, casually shrugging off any subtle or overt attacks on his designation as though the words spoken were too beneath his contempt to even acknowledge. Before long, most people barely referred to him with the term 'Alpha' at all. To most of the population, he was simply The Sheriff.

John's unexpectedly easy acceptance into the community was of great relief to Mary.

Obviously, because she loved him, she was happy for his sake that after the first couple of months of fear and distrust, people warmed to his presence and only the most devout of her Father's congregation still barred him from their homes or establishments unless he was in performance of his duty. But she was happy for her own sake too. When she had first moved out of the Campbell household it had been in full expectation that she would be shunned by the townsfolk. Admittedly it had been awful for a week or two at the outset as the rumours of her 'shame' spread with insidious speed but even by the end of the first month she had noticed attitudes thawing towards her as her new husband quietly got on with his job and proved, day by passing day, that an Alpha was just a man after all.

Naturally, John's acceptence into the community just further fanned the flames of Samuel Campbell's hatred.

For over twenty years he had guided his flock, educating them to the dangers of Alphas and the necessity to erradicate them from society. In just a few months, John had single-handedly undone two decades of work as all but the most devout of his followers came to the decision that, actually, Alphas weren't so bad after all. Yes, John was frighteningly strong but that had been the difference between life and death for Darren Wisenski when he'd crashed his car into an oak tree and had been trapped inside with flames from the engine already licking around him when John had simply ripped the car door off with his bare hands and pulled him to safety. Even Darren was grateful, despite receiving a ticket for dangerous driving when he was released from hospital. And, yes, John was physically frightening when he flashed his teeth and his red alpha eyes but that was only seen as a good thing when a gang of drug dealers from Kansas City made the mistake of trying to expand their territory to Lawrence only to exit the town within the hour as though hellhounds were on their tail.

Every Alfarsday, Samuel stressed how the Testament warned how the wiles of other designations were designed to fool Betas but, increasingly, his warnings fell on deaf ears. Fundamentally, at an instinctive level, the majority of Betas were designed to crave Pack safety and, in John Winchester, the Free Betas of Lawrence, Kansas were receiving a lesson on what they had lost when their ancestors had chosen to leave the packlands. The presence of the Alpha in their midst was a good thing, they decided, and slowly, inevitably, they began to doubt the teachings of the Abel Tablet and the attendence at the Church of Abel gradually began to decline.

Incensed, in Lunasdoce, the last month of that year, Samuel contacted the ArchDeacon of Kansas and asked for assistance to be sent before the Alpha devil in their midst totally destroyed all Samuel's good works.

Lunasdoce, co-incidentally, was when Mary was expected to deliver her pup but, inexplicably, although her stomach continued to distend and her doctor assured her the pup's heartbeat was strong, her expected delivery date came and went, and then another week passed, and then another and another and it was in the third week of Lunasuna when, just as she had decided that the pup would NEVER be whelped and she would be as huge as a Leviathan forever, without any warning whatsoever she went into labour.

John had been hovering around her for weeks, rarely leaving her side for more than an hour or two, and her appointed midwife had been popping in once or twice a day for six weeks, but it just so happened that she was completely alone when the pup decided to arrive.

One moment she was sitting there, nursing a cup of hot milk, the next a wave of fluid had poured out of her, a severe jolt of pain had driven her off her seat and onto her knees and just five agonising minutes later she was holding her son in her arms, his tiny face scrunched with anger as he wailed his protest at such a fast, rude arrival into the world.

Mary knew she should call John and the midwife and the doctor, hell, even her damned mother, for assistance but instead she went into auto-pilot, her protective mothering instincts forcing her to pull herself to her feet and totter unsteadily to the bathroom with her newborn pup.

By the time John arrived home on one of his regular drive-bys, an hour later, Mary was sitting in a spotless kitchen, with a clean, tightly swaddled pup nursing at her breast and the hammering panic in her breastbone had calmed enough that she could offer her husband a convincing enough smile that he had no idea, whatsoever, that something awful and inexplicable had happened.

"He's beautiful," John assured his wife. "Absolutely the most gorgeous pup ever." Then his brow creased a little in confusion. "Aren't all Beta pups born with blue eyes, even if they are going to be brown later?"

"Usually," Mary agreed, and shrugged with pretended nonchalance. "But my great-grandsire on my mother's side apparently had green eyes so I guess I must carry a recessive gene," she said, burying a terrible lie inside a strange truth. "My mother was named after him," she added.

"His name was Dean?"

"Yes."

"I like that. We'll call this little pup Dean too," John suggested. "Dean Winchester. It's a good strong name for a Beta. He'll need a strong name if he grows up with pretty Omegá green eyes," he chuckled. "Besides, it might soften your mother's heart a bit if we name him after her."

Mary laughed too, but her eyes were haunted as she looked down at her beautiful, impossible, green eyed pup and she thanked the All-Father that her solitary whelping had enabled her to hide her pup's tiny genitalia from anyone's view.

Her pup was an Omegá .

She knew it was true even though it wasn't possible and, strictly speaking, it would take at least another fourteen years to prove it one way or the other.

A Beta COULD be born with undeveloped genitals if there was some underlying genetic defect. A Beta could even be born with green eyes. A Beta pregnancy could over run nine months. (But not to a full exact ten, a voice insisted inside her head. Only Omegáres and Alphas took ten full months to gestate.)

And an Alpha could not sire an Omegá .

Everyone knew that.

It was scientific fact.

And yet, her pup, John Winchester's son, was undoubtedly an Omegá .


	13. Chapter Ten

Cain was a rather taciturn Alpha Primá with a large imposing physique and face that unfortunately naturally leant itself to an expression of glowering sterness but, beneath his somewhat frightening exterior, he had a serene soul and, at heart, he was a peaceful and surprisingly gentle man.

He loved all of his Primáre pups with a quiet passion and also had a particular fondness for his Alpha son, Balthazar, who reminded him in many ways of his brother Gabriel. 

Although Gabriel had somewhat delighted in tormenting him as a child, his pranks and jokes and even his taunts had been done with an undeniable thread of love woven through them and Cain therefore remembered him quite fondly. So when Cain received an invitation from Norway, where Gabriel had apparently settled, for his family to visit with his brother's he was sorely tempted to go.

Norway was one of the countries that had remained 100% under PackLaw, though Cain suspected it was less about religion but instead the country's forbidding climate which was the most likely cause of the Norwegian Betas' decision not to separate from their packs and attempt to live alone. He didn't imagine the Norwegian geography allowed for many independent settlements to survive, let alone thrive.

Gabriel had easily risen through the ranks of the existing Packs there because his direct bloodline to the original Adam had inevitably given him an unfair advantage over less pure-blooded rivals and due to a couple of unexpected (but perfectly natural) deaths of the two highest ranking Primáres, he was now considered the Grandé Alpha Primá of Norway, which made him not unlike the actual King of that country and, unlike Cain, Gabriel had no Church of Abel to contend with.

# We still have an Omegá shortage here, though,# he emailed. #The population here is just too small for more than a couple of Omegáres at most to be born each generation. If I knocked out pups as fast as Lucifer, my sons would never find brides. As it is, I already have three full-grown unwed pups who are starting to drive me insane with their complaints. Any chance of me sending you the bride-price and you purchasing me a few American Omegáres and sending them over? Bring them yourself. We can catch up. It will be fun. #

Cain immediately contacted Crowley and asked him to set his best people on the hunt. The news wasn't good. In the entire American packlands there were only two boys who were almost certain to present as Omegáres and both were still young children. The news from the Free Betas was barely better.

Cain emailed Gabriel with the results of Crowley's search.

# Only if your sons will settle for docked mates. We've scoured the whole country. There's five up for sale currently but the fucking Betas have snipped the cock and balls off the whole damned lot of them. #

It was nearly a week before Gabriel replied and, this time, he did it by phone.

"Okay, we'll take the damned lot," he said, as soon as Cain lifted the receiver.

"I presume that's you, Gabriel," Cain said, dryly.

"Oh, sorry, bro. I've just had to spend days kicking the asses of my pups until they accepted that a mutilated mate is still better than no mate at all. What the hell is wrong with the Betas in your country, Cain? And, more to the point, why aren't you stopping this goddamned atrocity?"

"The Betas have come up with some bullshit scientific 'evidence' that undocked Omegáres might contract cancer," Cain snarled, "And not one of my over-priced Alpha lawyers figured out what the Betas were up to before they managed to pass 'medically necessary docking' into Law."

"Fuckers," Gabriel muttered. "And the Betas."

Cain snorted. 

"Oh well. Spilt milk and all that shit," Gabriel continued philosophically. "So can you grab the poor little bastards for me and bring them over? They'll be received like princesses here, cock or no cock. My sons have finally seen the light and are now appropriately excited and are chomping at the bit to worship their new brides."

"I can't come," Cain said sadly. "I'd like to see you but with what's going on here, I don't dare take my eye off the ball. I could send Chuck and a couple of my pups over with the Omegáres though. My oldest, Raphael, and maybe my Alpha pup, Balthazar, because he's so like you it's frightening."

"I am the one and only me," Gabriel laughed, "but I'm intrigued. Send them. Hell, send 'em all. What about your youngest pup, Castiel? Chuck's always on the phone to my Shem, talking about him like he's something special."

"Well, that explains my phone bills," Cain grumbled. "Castiel is definitely something special, Gabriel, but I don't think you'd enjoy his company. Do you remember me at eight years old?"

"Eight? As I recall you were an insufferably boring little pup, Cain, from the moment you were whelped until you were at least eighteen. Far more interested in bees than Betas."

"Well, that's Castiel too," Cain chuckled fondly. "I actually think he's less socially adjusted than I was. Head always in a book or a beehive."

Gabriel expelled a breath of humorous disbelief. "Okay, just send Raphael and Balthazar then. I promise I'll corrupt them well."

"Don't get carried away," Cain warned. "Rafe's of age but Zar hasn't even presented yet. I only know he's definitely an Alpha because he isn't a Primá."

"You'd be amazed what trouble I can get them into without sex being involved," Gabriel assured him, with an evil chuckle.

"I'm going to regret this," Cain said, but he was smiling as he ended the call.

He contacted Crowley once more and asked him to proceed with purchasing the Omagáres for his brother’s pups.

Wary of a bidding war, Crowley made a point of informing all the Primáres of the lesser packs that Cain was buying the Omegáres so that they wouldn't bid against him and force the already phenomenal cost even higher. Cain still winced when he saw the total of the five purchases but Gabriel seemed happy enough to pay the amount.

Crowley, not wanting to run the risk of anything going wrong if he delegated the task, collected the Omegáres himself and delivered them personally to Cain's packlands. Cain was reluctantly impressed by the Alpha's actions and decided Chuck's peculiar insistence there was more depth to Crowley than surface appearances suggested was possibly not as misplaced as he'd previously thought.

Despite having been legally purchased, an Omegá remained subject to BetaLaw until such time as they received their mating bites so Cain wasn't surprised by the Omegáres state of dress when Crowley delivered them but he still found himself unnerved by the way their Omegá pants emphasised the fact of their docking.

Cain had previously held no particular issue with the Beta habit of dressing their Omegá offspring in silken chaps that left their buttocks and groins uncovered. Although PackLaw was less rigid, allowing an Omegá to choose his own clothing without restriction, it had always been traditional for young Omegáres to wear as little as the climate they lived in allowed. An Omegá was naturally a beautiful creature who couldn't be blamed for wanting to always show himself to advantage to ensure himself the best mate and the All-Father Testament clearly stated an Omegá had the right to clothe himself in nakedness if he so desired.

Historically, Omegáres had frequently romped around the Packlands stark naked to deliberately drive the Alpha Primáres so crazy with desire that they would battle each other, sometimes to the death, for the right to mate with them. Cain supposed the All-Father had arranged it that way to ensure only the very best and strongest of the Primáres survived to lead the Packs. 

It was rare for a mated Omegá to reveal their intimate flesh to anyone other than their Primá but Cain had never been bothered whether any Omegá, including his mate Chuck, chose to be clothed or not until the day he'd seen his brother's bride Ravan. Now, faced with five boys revealing similar castration scars, Cain found the sight of their groins not only repelling but he felt peculiarly embarrassed on their behalf because instead of their near nakedness being a self-chosen empowering display by a creature beyond normal reproach, it seemed more of an enforced humiliation.

The sudden insight stunned him.

He turned and raced to his library, pulling out a much worn copy of the original Testament, a copy of the first abridged Testament published by the Betas, a copy of the fifth edition and a copy of their latest 9th edition.

In the original All-Father Testament it was stated that ‘an Omegá who chooses to walk in nakedness is without sin for he simply honors the beauty of his perfect creation.’

In the first abridged Beta edition, the words were translated a little differently. ‘An Omegá walks in nakedness without sin to honour his creator.”

In the fifth edition it stated, “An Omegá without sin walks in nakedness."

In the latest edition, the words had changed to, ‘To clothe an Omegá is a sin.’


	14. Chapter Eleven

Mary gained a reputation as a wonderful mother, though some muttered a little spitefully about ‘helicopter’ parenting because she point blank refused to leave her infant son in the sole care of anyone else.

Even her own mother, Deanna, who had been so charmed by the baby with the name and peculiar eyes of her Grandsire, Dean, that she had indeed ‘softened’ towards her daughter, was never allowed to do more than hold the infant. Mary insisted on performing all of little Dean’s personal care herself. Whether he needed a change of diaper, a bath or putting down for a nap, Mary and Mary alone was to do it.

John was a doting, attentive father but he was a man’s man, and an Alpha to boot, so it never even occurred to him to wish to, or offer to, help with Dean’s physical care and he found his wife’s protective way with his pup to be charming rather than in any way peculiar.

Deanna put Mary’s peculiarities down to a form of mild selfishness. As a child, her daughter had always been rather possessive of her dolls and toys. Deanna thought Mary’s behaviour was just proof that even as an adult, Mary had still not learned how to share. Still, whilst Deanna enjoyed having a grandpup to spoil and coo over, she wasn’t particularly interested in revisiting the trials of dirty diapers and teething tantrums so, secretly, she was rather pleased Mary never asked her to babysit.

Samuel Campbell was also rather proud of his grandpup, though a little unsettled by his green eyes despite Deanna dismissing them as an occasional oddity that had popped up now and then in her family tree. Samuel didn’t doubt her but he had a fundamental dislike of anything that didn’t strictly conform to normal.

Samuel didn’t relent from his decision to ban John from his house but welcomed visits from Mary and the pup and not only refrained from using those visits to pontificate upon John’s inherent evil but, also, suddenly had very little to say about Alphas in his Alfarsday sermons. Mary believed her father was finally beginning to understand that John was a good man, husband and father and that was crumbling the foundations of his bigotry.

John was equally sure that Samuel was plotting something.

Whenever he and Samuel chanced to meet in public, both had always been scrupulously civil with each other, painting the landscape of their mutual dislike with broad brushstrokes of blatantly insincere politeness, only the fiery embers in John’s eyes and the icy coldness in Samuel’s evidence of their true feelings. But since Lunasuna, whilst the Minister continued to be unfailingly formal and polite to John’s face should they meet in the street or the council offices, his eyes no longer met John’s with the cold ice of loathing but dipped and shifted away from him with a furtiveness that made John’s gut churn with the certainty that Samuel was hiding a secret that bode nothing good for the Sheriff.

It was in Lunascinca, the fifth month of the year, when the blossoms were setting on the trees and the days were lengthening towards summer that John’s suspicions also bore bitter fruit.

In retrospect he should have seen it coming and he kicked himself for allowing Mary’s understandable excitement to suppress the gut-twisting instinct that niggled constantly at him that something terrible was going to happen. He supposed, later, that even he had not wished to believe his wife’s father capable of something so evil and, it had to be said, even when it was over and too late to turn back the clock, he still was left with no actual proof Samuel had orchestrated the whole sorry business, but he knew the truth of it and it took every ounce of his self-control not to rip Samuel Campbell limb from limb for deliberately bringing such evil to the door of a town John had begun to love.

In the second week of Lunascinca, whilst a four month old Dean was suckling on her tit, Mary quietly announced she was pregnant with another pup.

John, already happy to be a father, was overjoyed at this further evidence of his potency and by the end of his working day had announced the pregnancy to enough citizens of Lawrence that it was inevitable Samuel and Deanna learned of the second pup before Mary had even gotten around to phoning them with the news. When John returned home that evening, bearing a huge bouquet of flowers for his wife, she met him at the door with a beaming smile.

“Guess what?” she said, waving an envelope in his face. “We’re going on honeymoon.”

It was, Mary explained, a gift from the Campbells. “Mom said, with another pup on the way, if we don’t do it now, we’ll never do it. It’s their way of saying sorry, John, for the shotgun civil ceremony last year. It means they’ve accepted us, accepted YOU. Of course, Dad is still struggling. As Mom said, you can’t overturn a lifetime of prejudice overnight but he’s paid for our tickets to go to Europe for a month and he’d hardly have spent that kind of money if he wasn’t sincere.”

And every instinct told John the sudden ‘change of heart’ by Samuel was too good to be true and he wasn’t even sure there would be much fun or romance to a month long honeymoon of travelling with a wife suffering morning-sickness and a four-month-old pup and yet John wanted to believe it as much as Mary did. Since the day he had presented as an Alpha and turned overnight from a beloved son into a supposed monster shunned by his family and community alike, John had longed for acceptance. He’d left home and joined the Marines, believing he’d be welcome there but had been treated more like a useful attack dog than a member of his team. So he’d left the service and travelled from town to town, hunting desperately for somewhere to belong and now, possibly, with Mary and his family and the town of Lawrence maybe, possibly, he had finally found a home.

By the time he, Mary and the pup returned to Lawrence it was all over and there was not even a house, let alone a home, for them to claim.

It had apparently happened thusly:

As John was driving them to the airport in Kansas City he, unknowingly, passed a car travelling in the opposite direction. The occupants of that car were the family of an employee of the ArchDeacon of the Kansas Church of Abel, Richard ‘Dick’ Roman. There was nothing particularly special about that employee, except for his faithful devotion to the ‘Abel Tablet’ and his intense personal shame that his teenage son, Edgar, had presented as the thing he most hated, an Alpha. He had approached Dick Roman for advice of how best to remove the vile creature from his home before its inevitable rut rages proved a danger to his wife, daughters and society in general. He had, carefully, asked Roman whether a more permanent solution might be possible.

Roman’s solution, devised in careful consultation with Samuel Campbell, killed several birds with one stone.

John and Mary returned to Lawrence to find their little house had been razed to the ground and in their front yard a blackened frame held the charred dried corpse of a man, his carbonised features forever captured in a scream of agony that revealed he had been alive when the fire had been set. His open mouth also displayed a perfect set of pointed teeth. A notice hung around his neck, huge letters painted in blood red paint: “Sinner. Rapist. ALPHA.”

The Winchesters did not even get out of their car, let alone confront whatever mob had committed the atrocity. Both saw it instantly for what it was - a clear message they were no longer welcome.

Later, John would investigate the details of what had occurred in Lawrence but in that moment his only instinct was to protect his family.

So silently, furiously, he turned his black car around and simply drove them out of town.


	15. Chapter Twelve

Chuck decided to use the thirteen hour flight to Oslo as a chance to educate the young Omagáres he was escorting. 

Once he had settled his pups Raphael and Balthazar with computer games and refreshments, he turned his attention to the five Omagáres who were sitting in nervous awe, looking around the plush interior of the private jet with obvious disbelief.

”Get used to it, pups,” he said. "Not all Primáres are as disgustingly wealthy as my mate but you'll never meet a poor one. Whichever Primá you choose to bond with, expect him to be rich and understand that accepting his mating bite will automatically accord you the same lifestyle. Then ensure you enjoy the benefit of that wealth whenever the opportunity arises. The life of an Omegá is filled with unavoidable trials so make damned sure you enjoy all the fripperies you can along the way.”

"I don't understand," one of the older boys said. "You make it sound like we have a choice of bondmate but we all know we've already been sold at auction like animals. Where’s the damned choice in that?” The boldness of his words were somewhat spoiled by the way he immediately shrank into his seat as though expecting a blow, but Chuck was unspeakably relieved to see at least a spark of defiance remained in the Omegá. It gave him something to work with.

"What's your name?" he asked gently.

"Johann," the boy answered. He offered no family name but Chuck was unsurprised. Few of the Freeborn Omegáres cared to retain any connection to a family that had willingly sold them.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Johann, though I wish the circumstances were different. I tell you what, how about you all introduce yourselves, then we'll all have a little chat." 

He waited for them to tell him their names, then turned his attention back to Johan. "To answer your question, I need to disabuse you of probably everything you think you know about what it actually means to be an Omegá, and it will take a while so let's start by cutting through the bullshit.

“I too am Omegá. I also grew up outside the pack, born into a Free Beta family. However, the practice of docking was not written into law when I was your age and my family, though living independently, were not Ablests. My Omegá status was seen by them as something wondrous, not something they should use for financial gain. On presentation, when BetaLaw demanded I should have an Alpha Guardian, my mother gave me into the care of her own Sire, a man decades past rut rage and, more importantly, the very man who had raised her to honour Omegáres. So I entered my own mating an uncut virgin."

He paused, taking in the varying expressions of envy and resentment on the young Omagáres faces.

"I say this now, upfront, because it needs to be said, acknowledged and dismissed as irrelevant before I continue. All of you SHOULD have been raised in the same way. None of you were. What happened to you before you reached the safety of Pack Life was depraved, evil and wrong. I am horrified that you have suffered the insult of your castration and understand the distress it causes you when it is referred to as a mutilation as though you are now spoiled or ruined in some fashion. 

"But let me made something absolutely clear. Whatever YOU think, or the Free Betas think and whatever anyone in the Pack might think, you are NOT lessened by the evil that has been done to you. 

"Tarnished silver is still silver. A diamond dropped in a sewer and coated in shit is still a diamond. No evil done to you by others can ever detract from the fact that you are Omegá. You are a fleshly representation of the Omadonna. You are holy. You are still perfect in the eyes of the All-Father. You were born to be worshipped and, by the All-Father, you damned well WILL be worshipped by your future mates or I will personally bring the wrath of the Omadonna down on their heads,” Chuck snarled, his eyes flashing with gold.

"I know you've all been told your bride-price was paid by the Grandé Alpha Primá of Norway because he has three Primáre sons seeking mates and I confirm this is true. I will add to this that the Grandé Alpha Primá of Norway happens to be Gabriel Adamson, a brother of my mate Cain, and he shares my mate’s adherence to the tenets of the All-Father. No harm will ever come to you in Gabriel’s pack. However, because there are five of you, and you have been told there are only three Primáres seeking mates, I imagine you think that means he wants to offer them a choice between you.”

All of the Omegáres nodded and one of them, Simon, who was somewhat less conventionally attractive than the other four, chewed a thumbnail nervously then whispered, "What happens to us if we aren't chosen?"

"Well, that's the thing, Simon. You're looking at this whole thing from the wrong perspective. The real question you should be asking is what happens to you if you don't wish to mate with any of Gabriel's three sons. Gabriel didn't ask for more Omegáres to give his sons a choice of bride, he asked for all of you to increase the odds of at least ONE of you deciding to accept one of his sons. 

"Should any or, indeed, all of you decide Gabriel’s pups are not to your liking, it is most probable that he will open invitations to his lesser packs and allow them to present THEIR unmated Primáres for you to choose from. In the unlikely event that none of the Norwegian Primáres suit you, you will have the choice to remain in the Pack unmated until such time as a suitable mate is located for you.

"The absolute truth is that NO Omegá can be bonded by a Primá unless the Omegá consents to the mating."

The Omegáres all startled with surprise.

"Yes," Chuck said, with a grim nod. "I expected that to be a surprise to you but hear me now and understand the truth of it. When you are asked, in your mating ceremony, whether you accept your Primá as your mate, those words are not rote. Those words are not a mere formality to which you must nod obediently. Those words are a serious, genuine and respectful inquiry as to your desires. You can say 'no'."

"But Gabriel bought us," a boy named Adrian stated. "He owns us."

Chuck shrugged. "Again that's a matter of perspective. He has legally purchased you from your Beta families. That means they can never, under any circumstances, have any authority over you again. If you were staying in America you would still be subject to BetaLaw until you chose a mate, and that would reduce your personal freedoms in that you would still require an Alpha Guardian but, still, legally you belong to a pack now instead of your families and being under Alpha Guardianship in a Pack is totally different to what you have experienced in Free Beta society living in a Beta family.

"Life in a pack is totally unlike anything you have previously known. An Alpha Primá creates a pack rather than a family. He has a primary Beta wife, then possibly a number of other Betas, male and female who also share his sexual attentions. If he is very confident and successful he will also have one or more Alphas in his pack, and to prove his dominance he will mount those Alphas too on occasion. Those Alphas might have Beta wives and husbands of their own and, though it is unlikely the Alpha Primá will share relations with those lesser pack members, they will ultimately belong to the Primá so an Alpha who leaves the pack can only take his Betas with him with permission. Such permission is rarely granted because all pups born inside the pack are legally the Primá's pups, so a Beta female choosing to leave the Pack must leave her pups behind."

"So a pack IS a family, really," Johann said boldly. "Just a much bigger one with a lot more sex involved."

"Exactly," Chuck agreed with a wide smile. "Pack morality is more fluid than BetaLaw but it allows for a much larger, more cohesive group of people to live together harmoniously."

An Omegá named Paul raised his hand hesitantly and Chuck nodded to him encouragingly.

"If a Primá has a Beta Wife and all the other pack members and he can fuck any of them too, why does he even want an Omegá?"

"A Primá can copulate with any designation but he can only sire pups with an Omegá," Chuck explained. "Alpha Primáres are rare but Omegáres are rarer still so that means many Packs never gain the honour of hosting an Omegá and the Pack then dissolves on the death of the Primá because no heir has been born.

"Only a particularly rich, successful or lucky Alpha Primá will mate an Omegá. Remember this, for it is your sole power. The Primá who wishes to mate with you, who wishes to own you, can only do so if you allow him to and he needs YOU more than you need him. So choose your mate carefully, in the knowledge there will be sufficient other choices waiting for you should your suitor fail to please you."

"Our Primá will still own us," Johann grumbled, "so all you're really saying is that we will have a choice of owners."

Chuck laughed gently and shook his head in denial. "Your Primá won't own you in a legal sense. Undeniably he will 'own' you but that is a fault of biology not PackLaw. The moment an Omegá willingly accepts the mating bite of a Primá, we are flooded with the pheromones of that Primá and are bonded to that mate for life. A Primá can sever that bond on his side and mate again. An Omegá cannot do so. If we are widowed or set aside for becoming barren, we cannot bond a second time.

"The pheromones of an Alpha Primá allow them to impose their will on all designations to varying degrees. Primáres have the literal ability to impose complete mind-control on any Beta or Alpha. They rarely use that ability because the knowledge that they can do it is usually enough for the lesser designations to choose to bow to their Primá's will voluntarily. And, yes, of course that could allow a Primá to become a dictator but it is against their nature to do so. In the unlikely event a Primá should abuse that ability, his fellow Primáres would swiftly act against him. 

"A Primá cannot control the mind or thoughts of an Omegá. In that way we are set apart. However, he is not powerless against us because just one waft of Alpha Pheromones in our direction usually distracts us so much we forget what we are arguing about," Chuck confessed ruefully. "There's no point denying that Omegáres are slaves to their own sexuality and it is in that way that we are owned by our mates; our own inability to keep our legs shut when they are within scenting distance."

"My sire said all Omegáres are sluts," Simon said, his eyes dark with remembered hurt.

"Well, he was right I suppose," Chuck agreed equably. "The fault isn't in that he said it to you but that he said it as though it were something you should feel shame about. Omegáres are supremely sexual creatures. The All-Father designed us so and it is not for anyone of any other designation to dare have the audacity to criticise us for acting in the way God intended, let alone write laws that try to impose their stupid morality over our behaviour.

"However, there is no BetaLaw in Norway and in approximately," Chuck paused, checked his watch and then grinned widely, "well, approximately now, actually, this jet has passed outside of US airspace and you are now only subject to PackLaw."

"What does that really mean, though?" Johann asked.

It was Balthazar who answered, looking up from his hand-held computer game long enough to say, "It means I can stop pretending to be here as your official Alpha Guardian and just start enjoying my holiday."

The Omegáres stared at the little boy in disbelief but Chuck chuckled. "It's true," he admitted. "As unmated Omegáres, it would have been illegal for you to get on this US registered plane without an Alpha Guardian. Fortunately BetaLaw does not specifically state how old that Alpha should be or even that he has to have presented since Beta pups can't even be identified as being Alphas until presentation. So my little pup here enabled you to get on this flight and now, as you are legally Norwegian Omegáres in international airspace, BetaLaw will never apply to you again."

"So we can wear real pants again if we want to?" An Omegá named David asked quietly.

Chuck closed his eyes in pain at the plaintive hope in the boy's voice.  
"Under PackLaw an Omegá can wear anything or even nothing if we so choose. I admit it sorrows me that you feel shame in nakedness but I blame the Betas for making you feel that way, not you for having those feelings. In time I hope you will regain all the confidence and pride stolen from you but, anticipating your question, David, if you look in the box over there you will find all manner of pants, jeans, skirts and dresses. All of you are welcome to choose whatever outfits you wish to wear to disembark the plane. I would, though, make the suggestion you choose the warmer fabrics since our destination is not the kindest climate."

He was saddened but not surprised that all five Omegáres immediately took advantage of his offer. He waited patiently for them to choose new outfits and dress themselves, then he proceeded to explain more about the reality of being an Omegá.

"Returning to Adrian's point, you were paid for by Gabriel but you don't belong to him or any other person. What you now belong to is Gabriel's Pack. That does not mean you are property of the Pack. It means you are a MEMBER of the Pack. Being a member of a Pack accords anyone, of any designation, certain rights and responsibilities. In Pack Life all designations are equally valuable, all have their important roles to play, but there is a hierarchy and in that hierarchy an Omegá sits in the very highest place."

"I don't understand," Simon said. "I thought Primáres ruled the Packs."

"It is confusing," Chuck agreed, "but only because you are, understandably, trying to envisage a pack in the context of your experience of living with Betas. To understand Pack Life, you need to throw away your preconceived ideas and look at the world in the way how the All-Father intended it to be.

"The All-Father created four designations to perform four distinct and different functions, so each designation is physically and psychologically different. He created the Beta designation and made them bright, inquisitive and adventurous. He gave them the ability to dream, to create, to explore and to build. He created a world with all the raw materials required to create a civilisation and he gave Betas the ability and desire to make it happen.

"Because the Betas are the builders and makers, they are necessarily the most numerous of the designations but to prevent them becoming TOO numerous, the All-Father created them with short lifespans and low sex-drives. I doubt any of you have ever experienced an expression of sexual desire from a Beta."

"I have never been touched by a Beta in that way," Simon said, "but they've often watched me being mounted by an Alpha." 

Chuck nodded. "Beta inquisitiveness is frequently manifested as voyeurism," he agreed, "but not as actual sexual desire towards Omegáres. The All-Father created Alphas to be the protectors of the Pack. He made them stronger than Betas and designed them to rely more upon their instincts than their intellect. They are intended to be the brawn supporting the Beta's brains in a symbiotic relationship. Alpha Primáres are not rulers. They are Leaders. There is a difference. They were created with both brain and brawn. They need physical power to lead the Alphas and intellectual power to lead the Betas. And, of course, the All-Father created the Omegáres to be the perfect mate for Primáres."

"Why didn't the All-Father make it so Alphas didn't want us sexually either?" David asked sadly. "Everything would be different if they were like Betas."

Chuck sighed. "An Alpha's desire for an Omegá was designed to inspire him to be willing to lay down his life without hesitation in protection of that Omegá," he explained. "In ancient times, that devotion was sometimes the only reason a Pack survived into the next generation. But what you need to understand is that your previous experiences with Alphas has not been representative of how Alphas behave in Packs. The Betas use Omegáres to control rut rage in teenagers. In Pack Life, Alpha Primáres emit a calming pheromone that enables young Alphas to fully control their hormones."

"So Alphas don't mount Omegáres in packs?" Simon asked.

"Sadly, not often these days," Chuck replied, then seeing the confusion on the boys faces he chuckled gently. "An Omegá born within the Pack enters his mating as a virgin because no Pack member of any designation would have the temerity to romantically approach the intended bride of a Primá. After an Omegá is mated though, should an Alpha of the Pack believe his sexual attention might be welcome to that Omegá he has the right to request permission of the Primá to approach the Omegá. If it is given then it is the Omegás sole decision whether to accept or decline the Alpha's offer."

"And that's really okay?" Johan asked. 

"Why not?" Chuck challenged. "We're Omegáres. We like sex. Why should we pretend otherwise? I doubt you know this but, in the past, when Packs were strong and all followed the teachings of the All-Father, an entire Pack's Alphas would join their Primá to celebrate the Omadonna on every full-moon by all present worshipping at the altar of the Pack's Omegá.

"Those were good times," he sighed, his eyes flashing gold.

"Do even you offer your flower to Alphas?" Johann asked suspiciously.

"Quite frequently," Chuck replied breezily. "My mate is the Grandé Alpha Primá. Although he has taken only one Beta as wife, Cain has a lot of Alphas in his Pack whom he is obliged to occasionally dominate. Why should my altar ever be deprived of worship just because my mate's cock is otherwise occupied? Cain would never deny me the right to accept whatever worship I demand to be my due."

He waited a moment for startled understanding to settle on the faces of the young Omegáres.

"You see. Nothing is quite the way you thought, is it? This world you are living in is not the world your Beta families taught you to believe. To be an Omegá is not a curse. To be an Omegá is the most wonderful thing. But only if we endeavour to remind the Betas and, sadly, even some of the modern Pack members that it is so.

"The Alpha Primáres are understandably shocked and distressed that you have been docked and that Alphas have defiled your flowers with brute sex rather than holy worship. It is right they should feel that way because it is a horror and an outrage. However, if there is any shame to be had it is THEIR shame for allowing it to happen, for forgetting their duty to protect you from such abuse in the first place. Do not wear their shame. It is theirs alone to bear.

"When this plane lands, do not step out of it as cowed victims who have accepted their bodies are ruined and their life henceforth is to be that of a sexual slave.

"You are Omegá.

"Step out with your heads high, walk with the confidence of queens, demand a place of honour in the Pack you join and let Gabriel's pups know in no uncertain terms that they are fortunate to even have the opportunity to convince you they are worthy to worship at your altars."


	16. Chapter Thirteen

John Winchester not only left the town of Lawrence, he drove his family out of Kansas entirely and into Nebraska.

Had he been alone he would have reached his destination in a few hours, even as tired as he was after having begun the day in Londinium in Brittaña, suffered a transatlantic flight, a drive from the airport to Lawrence and an arrival at the scene of the closest thing he'd seen to hell since his time in the Asiatic wars. Ordinarily, adrenaline alone would have powered his drive through the night to safety.

But John had a tearful, pregnant wife and a tiny pup to consider so, as soon as they crossed the state line, John stopped at the first halfway decent motel that was flashing a vacancy sign and he decamped his family, relieved at least that the circumstances meant he had a trunk of suitcases full of clothes and necessities.

It was only when they were in the quiet privacy of the motel room, with a closed door between them and the rest of the world, that Mary finally asked. "What are we going to do now, John?"

Still she did not question his decision to leave Lawrence despite the fact neither of them had spoken out loud their fears of what had happened there, let alone who was behind it. John was glad of that. He feared actually speaking his suspicions aloud would add an insidious poison into their relationship that would fester into a suppurating wound. Sometimes, things were best left unsaid. Particularly when apparently they involved a bigoted father-in-law who had somehow orchestrated a rape and a murder by a baying mob of vigilantes just to prove, after all, that he had been right about Alphas all along. 

So the suspicion or, lets face it, knowledge, sat between them unspoken and they simply tried to move on with their lives.

"I chose Nebraska because an old friend Bill Harvelle lives here," he explained. "Actually, I was on my way to meet up with him when I drove through a little Kansas town and was swept off my feet by a beautiful Beta girl. Anyway, Bill has a successful bounty hunting operation and he needed a partner back then. Last time I spoke to him, couple of months ago, he was still looking for someone, so l hope he'll still have a job open for me.

"His wife, Ellen, is your age and they have a daughter, Jo, just a couple of years older than Dean. You'll like Ellen, she's like you, a tough, spirited, no-nonsense kind of woman and it will be good for you to have a friend who is also married to an Alpha. It'll make things easier. With the new pup coming, you'll need support and Ellen's a good woman. I want her at your back when the new pup is born."

Fortunately for the Winchesters, Bill was not only still in need of a partner but the Harvelles lived in a large enough house that they could invite John and Mary to move in with them. The house was old and run-down but Ellen prided herself in keeping it clean, warm and welcoming and, because she had a toddler herself, it was child-safe.

Ellen also had a cot and other various baby items that would make caring for Dean a lot easier. John had some savings but not enough to replace everything they had lost in the fire AND keep them fed whilst he worked towards his first pay check from Bill.

Mary was hesitant at first about the idea of a shared household but as time progressed and she realised John's new job involved a lot of time away from home, she understood that Ellen's hospitality was as self serving as it was generous. Mary found it easier to live in the Harvelles' home in the knowledge that her presence was genuinely welcomed by Ellen.

"I get pretty lonely with Bill working all the time," Ellen confessed. "The neighbours are civil, at least, but far from friendly. I knew what I was getting into, marrying an Alpha, so I'm not complaining but, still, it's nice to have company. "

It worked well for Mary that Ellen, though a loving and protective mother, was not particularly maternal and certainly had no interest in participating in Dean's care so Mary was able to relax somewhat. Certainly, if the two women were together and it became evident Dean's diaper needed changing, Ellen never volunteered to do it.

Mary spent a lot of her spare time on the internet, searching endlessly for some explanation for Dean's designation. Surely, she told herself, there had to be another example, somewhere in the world, of an Alpha siring an Omegá. All she needed was one similar case and she would feel able to stop hiding the secret from John. Sure it would still be an uphill struggle to convince her mate but not an insurmountable task if she could start the conversation with proof the situation was unusual rather than unique. But none of her research bore fruit and so she kept quiet and hoped, somehow, a believable explanation would present itself before the truth was revealed.

Meanwhile, her second pregnancy progressed and she was sure she could be forgiven for her terror it would happen again, that somehow the impossible would happen once more and she would birth a second Omegá pup. Particularly when, yet again, her expected delivery date came and went and, for the second time, her gestation period was a full ten months.

This time she was not alone when she gave birth and, given that the second labour took five hours rather than five minutes, she was grateful for Ellen's cool, calm presence at her side. John and Bill were on the other side of Wyoming on a potentially lucrative case and Mary refused to let Ellen call them. Money was tight and with another pup on the way the last thing she wanted was for them to lose a commission. The hunters received up to 20% of a bail bond for retrieving a fugitive and she understood the person they were chasing had borrowed a substantial amount from the bail bondsmen Bill worked for.

Also, she was conscious there might be a need to either beg Ellen for secrecy or somehow find a way to convince John she had not been unfaithful.

Mary's heart almost stopped when the baby arrived and Ellen made a small exclamation of disappointment. "Is something wrong?" she gasped, terror thundering through her veins.

"It's another darned boy," Ellen laughed. "I was really hoping you'd have a little girl this time. Poor Jo wants a little 'sister'."

John was thrilled to return home to a second son. He had an irrational but not completely unusual belief that siring male pups was greater proof of his own male potency.

"He looks like me," he announced. 

"So does Dean," Mary said, defensively.

John thought about it, then shook his head in negation. "No, Dean looks like you, Mary, and that's pretty darned great. He's got your hair and your cute mouth and your great grandsire's weird green eyes but Sam looks like me. Same hair, same eyes. "

Mary was glad it was John holding the pup because she suspected she would have dropped him in her shock. "You still want to call him Sam?" 

"It's what we agreed, back when Dean was born, and I see no reason to change my mind. Your father has taken enough from us already, Mary. He's dispossessed us of everything else. Why should I let him steal our pup's name too?"

Mary suspected John's real reason was that naming his son after her father was intended as a petty act of spite, a way of figuratively sticking two fingers at the man. She suspected Samuel Campbell would be pretty horrified at the thought of John naming a son after him and she equally believed that was the reason John was doing it.

But, still, as John said, they had always intended to call their second pup Samuel or Samantha.

And, most importantly of all, despite all her fears, at least little Sam was not an Omegá.

For the next five years life, whilst not idyllic, was pretty good for the Winchesters.

Both Dean and Sam grew and thrived. At five years old, Dean was tall for his age, stocky of build, irrepressibly adventurous and so protective of his younger brother that John often said that if he didn't know better he'd think Dean was going to present as an Alpha.

The irony of the comment didn't escape Mary.

Sam was also tall but less confident in attitude and far less interested in adventure than story books. Everything about his demeanour and intelligence screamed Beta and for that, at least, Mary was thankful.

It was true, possibly, that she encouraged Dean to pursue more 'masculine' activities and encouraged his more boisterous behaviour. She reasoned that the more Dean behaved like a little mini-John, the less likely it would be that anyone would guess the terrible secret she was keeping.

She figured she maybe had another nine years to solve the problem and that Dean was safe until then. As long as she cautioned him to be 'modest' and 'shy' about his body in situations like school changing rooms, there was no legitimate reason for anyone to find out about his designation until he actually presented.

Mary expected they would spend those years in Nebraska but then something so terrible happened that everything changed in an instant and, yet again, the Winchesters found themselves back on the road, without a home, driving into an uncertain future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the sake of this story, I really needed Sam to be only a year younger than Dean.


	17. Chapter Fourteen

"Gabriel phoned me today," Cain said.

"Oh?" Chuck replied with studied nonchalance.

"It seems his son Ishmael's new bride is causing a bit of a scandal in Norway and, apparently it's MY fault."

"I like Simon," Chuck replied, with a fond smile. "Not the prettiest of Omegáres, admittedly, but he definitely developed a wonderful personality once he had a better understanding of his designation. I was rather pleased he finally caught Gabriel's favourite pup for a mate. He ran that boy a real dance and ended up with the Primá literally on his knees begging for Simon to accept him. I was so proud when Simon made it an actual condition of the bonding that Ishmael had to give permission for all of his Alphas to offer worship too. Such a bright pup."

Chuck had remained in Norway for almost a full year, carefully continuing the Omegáres re-education and supervising the deliberately slow mating dances that had eventually resulted in all five boys being successfully matched. Three of the Omegáres had, indeed, taken Gabriel's oldest pups as mates so Cain's brother had been pleased and the other two Omegáres had found favour in a couple of Primáres from rich influential Norwegian sub-packs and Gabriel had thus managed to recoup their bride-prices and was pleased about THAT too, so Chuck didn't feel that Gabriel was in a position to complain about anything. 

He said as much to Cain.

"He isn't exactly complaining," Cain clarified, "as much as using it as an opportunity to mock me incessantly for being such a 'dark horse', as he puts it."

"Really?" Chuck asked innocently.

"Yes, really," Cain grumbled. "So, I have to ask, love of my loins, what is the source of this strange reputation I appear to have developed in Europe as some rampant, Uber Alpha Primá who spends so much time dominating my poor Alphas that not only can they barely walk straight but, apparently, my consequently sadly neglected Omegá is forced to constantly abuse their cocks like convenient mobile seating pegs? Gabriel is threatening to send over a couple of Health Inspectors to check whether the asses of my pack Alphas require surgical repair."

Chuck laughed delightedly. Cain glowered in response. "It's bad enough Gabriel has found an excuse to laugh at me, don't you dare start doing it too."

"Sorry," Chuck chuckled, "but I can't help imagining the look on Crowley's face if some Norwegian Beta doctor turned up here and demands he drops his pants for a rectal examination."

Cain's mouth twitched with reluctant humor but he also shuddered slightly in remembered distaste. "You know perfectly well, Chuck, that I only ever mounted Crowley on the day he pledged allegiance to me and I've never been in a hurry to ever repeat the experience. Smarmy little bastard makes my skin crawl."

"You're very unfair to Fergus," Chuck replied. "He's a perfectly attractive man, if a little on the short side."

"He's a dangerously ambitious demonic pain in MY ass," Cain said. "He only bent over for me to fuel his own agenda and the last thing I'd do is let him believe he is worthy of any special attention from me by repeating the process. He's a smart and useful Alpha but I don't trust him as far as I can throw him."

Chuck shrugged. "Considering his mother, I think he's turned out surprisingly well. His soul was poisoned in his mother's womb and then he sold most of its tattered remains to fuel his ambition so I agree, at the moment, he doesn't have the most winning personality. But the thing about souls is that even if only a tiny smouldering ember is left, if the right wind comes along to fan the flame it will be restored to its full burning glory."

"Returning to the actual point of this conversation, would you care to enlighten me as to why my supposed virility and your apparent rampant sexuality are now subjects of hot conversation in Europe?"

"Stop saying it like it's a bad thing," Chuck replied dismissively. "You can hardly take insult at us being perceived that way and it's irrelevent whether its actually true or not. What's important is that it COULD be true and it suited my purposes to imply that it was. You know perfectly well that an average Omegá has a far higher sex drive than I do. Considering the amount of abuse those poor boys had suffered in their pasts, it was imperative I reassured them it was perfectly natural that they had always enjoyed the PHYSICAL experience of being penetrated. I can't even begin to imagine how traumatic it would feel to not only be mounted against my will but then suffer the horror of my body reacting positively to the experience even whilst my mind was screaming 'no'. I thought the easiest way to tell them there was nothing wrong, perverted or unusual in their bodies' desire for sexual gratification was to reassure them that all Omegáres share the same base, animalistic desire for penetration."

"Except you," Cain pointed out.

"I'm not an average Omegá," Chuck replied unapologetically. "One of us needs to keep our head in these times. But the point is I could be the same and if I were, would you deny me my right to be kept satisfied?"

"I could deny you nothing, ever," Cain assured him.

"Well then," Chuck said, "there's nothing more to be said about it."

Cain pondered quietly for a few moments, then said, "Well, actually, Chuck, I think there is more that needs to be said. I understand that the Omadonna speaks through you and I respect his wishes. I think, however, its only fair if, now and again, I'm permitted to ask what the hell you are actually up to."

Chuck laughed. "You're an intelligent man, Cain. I suspect you already have a damned fine idea why I did this." 

"So call this my need to stroke my ego by knowing I've guessed correctly," Cain suggested.

"Go for it," Chuck said, gesturing for Cain to elaborate.

"You're preparing the way for the return of the formal, monthly Omadonna celebration."

"Hole in one," Chuck agreed.

"Why?"

"Why not?" Chuck countered cheekily, then sighed and huffed out a breath as he gathered his thoughts. "Seriously, Cain, the real question you have to ask is how it ever fell out of favor in the first place. It isn't the Celebration itself that is important so much as the fact we no longer practice it. It is just another proof of the insidious creep of modernity that has taken us so far away from the All-Father's teachings.

"The thing is, we in the Packs in the large continents are so darned concerned about how the Free Betas are deliberately corrupting the religion that we are failing to see that we are all inadvertantly guilty of the same crime. Even in countries like Norway, where BetaLaw has never been acknowledged, there is still a slow, corrupting rot. It has become 'unfashionable' for Omegáres to be bridled. A celebration of the Full Moon has not been held in ANY country for more than a century. Almost all Alpha Primáres now treat their Omegáres as though their bodies belong to them after a mating bond. Do you have any idea how many Primáres NEVER give permission to any of their Alphas to worship also? Not only is that a gross insult to an Omegá, that their mate denies them the right to choose who may or may not touch them as though they are no more than a Beta Wife, but the loyalty and cohesion of the Pack is threatened by such covetous guarding of their Omegá's flower.

"An Omegá Bride was never intended to be the wife of a Primá. He is the mate of a Primá but the holy wife of the entire Pack, Cain. You know this is so. But so many Packs have fallen so far from the true path that they don't even realise they are insulting their Omegáres with this new-fangled idea that it is somehow 'wrong' for an Omegá to be fucked by anyone except their mate."

Cain nodded his agreement. "I suspect a lot of it comes from the fallout from BetaLaw, though," he said. "The fact young Omegáres are being abused outside of the pack by Free Alphas means that when they finally are brought into the pack, the Primáres can't bear the thought of them ever being subjected to Alpha cocks again."

"I know it is well meant by the Primáres," Chuck acknowledged, "and the poor pups come to Pack Life so traumatised that they themselves don't believe they want the worship of Alphas either so it all seems very right and good and civilised that the Packs have adapted to a new modern version of the religion. But, really, Cain, where's the difference between US creating a new version of the Testament and the Betas doing so? Except for intent, the result is the same. Both Betas and Packs have moved so far from the original that we might as well all call ourselves athiests and be done with it."

Cain pondered his words carefully, then said, "Is it really such a bad thing if we do? Is it truly necessary for us to retain traditions that date back to the time people thought fire was something mystical and the moon only waxed and waned at the behest of the Omadonna? We know it is ridiculous to believe our harvests depend upon whether or not we have performed the ceremony. After thousands of years of science and learning, is really so strange that we have chosen to adapt our practices in line with our increased knowledge and more civilised morality?"

"Hah!" Chuck exclaimed. "Morality. If I could wipe any word out of existence it would be that one. How dare you, or any other man, suggest that your interpretation of 'morality' is better than that of the All-Father himself? I accept that we are capable now of discarding ancient superstitions, that our increased knowledge of such things as gravity has rightly replaced the original fumbling attempts by humanity to understand the world. I do not accept, however, that anything we have grown to learn and understand negates one single word of the All-Father Testament or his commandments."

Blessed with the sharp intelligence and near eidetic memory that all Alpha Primáres posessed, Cain let the words of the Testament flow through his head, word by word, line by line, until he looked up at his mate with an almost comical expression of surprise. "You're right. The original testament states the Pack should honor the Omadonna on the Full Moon by worshipping the Pack's Omegá, but makes no mention of 'why'. All the reasons why our ancestors thought it was done, such as ensuring good harvest and fertility, have been discounted by science and so the practice has also been discarded but the original testament simply said it should be done."

"Exactly. It should be done. It is one of the actual Commandments. You have all broken faith with the All-Father and you didn't even realise you had done so."

"Then what you have started in Norway is a good thing," Cain agreed. 

"It will take time to bring all the Packs back to practising a true and pure version of the faith," Chuck said, "but I have set things in motion to change attitudes so that when the time comes that we NEED to depend on the mercy of the All-Father, he will see the Packs as worth saving."

"The All-Father is merciful," Cain argued. "He forgives all who transgress against him. He would not strike the Packs down for a genuine error done with good intent."

"The All-Father forgives transgressions against HIMSELF," Chuck stated solemnly. "Do not be so certain of his same benevolence regarding transgressions against the Omadonna." His eyes flashed with a golden glow and Cain swallowed heavily, understanding now, absolutely, that he was not merely listening to his mate's opinion but to a fundamental truth.

A terrible memory tumbled into his head, so clearly he was certain it had been thrust into the forefront of his mind deliberately.

~

Five years after Cain's sire Adam died, a Columbian Alpha Primá named Ezekiel had tired of chaffing under Lucifer's rule and had decided to try his luck in the US instead. He had moved his Pack into Cain's territory and had visited the primary Pack Lands, demanding an audience not to pledge his allegience but to offer challenge against Cain for the role of Grandé Alpha Primà.

Because the last American leadership challenge had taken place many centuries earlier and all subsequent successions had been done by the simple handover from one heir to another from the original Adam's bloodline, no one had ever revisted the PackLaw that allowed any Alpha Primá to offer a physical challenge to the Grandé Alpha Primá so the law was still valid. A faliure to accept the challenge would result in the challenger's automatic victory. It was a throwback to a far more violent time in Pack history, when challenges to the death were frequent inside the lesser Packs also. 

Cain was a quiet man who eschewed any unnecessary violence. He led his Pack, and his American sub-packs alike, with a light hand. He had therefore, unfortunately, created an impression of weakness to the far more brutal and heavy handed Ezekiel.

However, Cain was not weak. He merely had the attitude that only small dogs yapped and snarled to prove themselves. So when Ezekiel challenged him to fight, his response was more indicative of boredom rather than worry. He merely sighed, rose to his feet, drew his blade from its sheath and said, "If we must," in a put-upon tone.

The lack of reaction did give Ezekiel a moment of pause but he was too self-confident to allow himself to be distracted for more than a moment by what he assumed was a mind game. He drew his own knife and leapt at Cain, his teeth bared and his eyes glowing with the phosphorous blue that Primáres emitted during moments of high passion. Unlike the red fire of Alpha eyes, Primáres eyes always shone with the cold ice-blue of a frozen tundra.

Ezekiel had won many fights and challenges in his life, fighting was a skillset frequently required in the Country he had been raised in, so he expected his battle with a Primá from the far more civilised America to be short. 

It was. 

It was so short it was over before it even began. Cain allowed the tip of Ezekiel's blade to almost nick his skin before raising not his hand holding his own blade but his bare left hand and striking a blow sidewards across his challenger's head in a move reminiscent of cuffing an unruly pup around the ears.

The striking hand descended with such power that Ezekial was lifted off his feet and thown several feet through the air before landing in a heavy, ungainly heap on the far end of the room. His ears were ringing so hard with the force of Cain's blow that he weaved drunkenly as he struggled to regain his footing and though he could barely hear over the rushing inside his own skull, he could hear the laughter of the assembled Packs.

Cain raised a sardonic eyebrow at him, his scornful expression dismissing him as nothing more than a silly pup who had barely been worth attention. "Go now," Cain said, "and we can forget this incident happened."

There was a mutter of surprise from Ezekial's pack members. None of the Columbians had ever before witnessed a winner offering mercy to a defeated challenger and, though Ezekial was still standing and only one blow had been struck, it was clear to all concerned that the fight was over.

Ezekial, however, did not take kindly to being offered 'mercy'. Smarting both from the blow and from the humiliation of being defeated in front of his own pack, Ezekial grabbed for his blade and charged once more.

But instead of charging at Cain, he aimed his attack at Chuck. Uncaring that he was going to commit an atrocity that would bring the ire of EVERY Primá down on his head, in that moment he was too maddened by his own disgrace to care what consequences he would suffer. He wanted to hurt Cain and he knew the best way to destroy Cain was to kill his Omegá.

When Ezekial was within inches of his goal, he was close enough to the Omegá to see a flare of gold surge not only in Chuck's eyes but in a faint corona around his entire body as though a protective forcefield had sprung into place. That would, perhaps, have been enough to shock him to his senses but he had barely a second to perceive the phenomona before he was grabbed by the back of his neck, hauled off his feet and thrown so violently that his back impacted against the far wall, his feet several feet above the ground. Before he had fully finished sliding down to ground level, he screamed as a blade pierced his shoulder, thudded into the brickwork behind him and pinned him in place, so he was mounted like a huge struggling butterfly.

He looked down to see, somehow, it was his own long knife that was pinning him to the wall.

Cain's knife was still in Cain's hand and it glowed malevolently, its surface reflecting the ice-blue that had fully replaced Cain's previously calm brown eyes.

For the next twenty minutes or so, Ezekial felt the whispering, agonising bite of that blade as Cain literally skinned him alive.

And when it was done, and Ezekial was nothing more than a screaming, howling hunk of wet, red meat still helplessly trapped by his own weapon, Cain then reversed his blade to expose the jagged edge, and proceeded to slowly and methodically saw Ezekial's head from his shoulders.

Ezekial expired probably half-way through the decapitation but Cain grimly proceeded until the job was finished and he himself was bathed in blood. 

Then Cain resheathed his blade, calmly returned to where he had been seated before Ezekial's entrance, looked around the pale blood-spattered pack members (many of whom were vomiting in shock) and asked, "Does anyone else have any business they wish to raise?"

~

"You see," Chuck said, softly. "Can you imagine the All-Father would do any less in defence of HIS Omegá?"

And Cain swallowed heavily as he understood in that moment that if something fundamental didn't change, if the Betas weren't defeated and Pack Law, REAL PackLaw was not restored to return the Omadonna to his rightful place, then the All-Father would surely raze the whole world.


	18. Chapter Fifteen

Mary had very little understanding of how Pack Life worked but she wondered, as they left Nebraska, whether the problem with Alphas in modern society was less an inherent instability as her father had claimed but more the lack of Alpha Primáres in their life.

She didn't think she had any right to feel sorry for herself, despite the fact she was yet again being driven through the night to an unknown destination. The only small differences between this journey and the one from Lawrence five years earlier was that she now had two small pups fretting on the backseat of the car rather than one and this time she actually knew the name of the Alpha whose death had left the Winchesters homeless.

The dead Alpha was Bill Harvelle.

She didn't really blame Ellen. Mary wasn't sure she'd have reacted any differently in her place. Ellen hadn't been cruel. She hadn't been angry. She'd even apologised for her decision, stressing to Mary that it wasn't her or her boys who were no longer welcome, only John.

As if that made it any better.

Bill's death hadn't even been John's fault. The way it had gone down, it could have been John's body lying in that morgue just as easily as Bill's and it was just fate or blind luck or sheer chance that it was Mary's husband who returned on two feet, rather than in a wooden casket like Bill did.

Which was not to say Bill's death hadn't been preventable and it was that which was the source of Ellen Harvelle's ire. 

Still, if the blame lay with anyone it could equally be lain on Bill as on John. Or maybe just on the fact that both of them were Alphas and they had both become so confident they were invulnerable that they had both started cutting corners and taking unnecessary risks. Mary guessed it was probably inevitable that men so strong and physically superior to the average would develop such an arrogance in their abilities that, eventually, they would make a fatal mistake. Bill hadn't died because he was an Alpha but it was because he was an Alpha that he had carelessly put himself into a position where he had died, killed in a moment's distraction by a fugitive both Alphas had underestimated because he was 'only' a Beta.

And Mary couldn't help but wonder whether THAT was why Packs had Primáres. So that Alphas never forgot that no matter how big or strong or clever they thought they were, there was still someone out there who was more dangerous.

~

John drove his family to a small town in South Dakota, named Sioux Falls.

Just outside the outskirts of the town there was a sprawling Salvage Yard owed by a man named Bobby Singer who John described as a 'friend' although Mary could see very little friendliness in either the shotgun he greeted them with on arrival or his gruff unsmiling countenance.

Bobby owned a huge dilapidated house that sat smack in the centre of the yard, a house in which he said they were welcome to stay although Mary detected no genuine welcome in the offer.

John told her he knew Bobby through the Bounty Hunting community though Mary couldn't see how that was true, since Bobby was wheelchair-bound and seemingly paralysed from the waist downwards. Mary couldn't even begin to imagine how it would be for an Alpha to live with such a terrible injury and her empathy for his situation made his rough edges and gruff demeanour easier to bear.

It was also easier to accept his temporary offer of a couple of rooms on his first floor since it was obvious he had no use for them himself.

Mary could see a woman's touch in the decoration of the upstairs rooms, though the wallpaper was faded with age and the bedsheets were thick with dust. John told her that Bobby had once had a Beta wife but that she had died in childbirth and Bobby had lived alone since then.

At first she struggled to see how any woman could have fallen for the cantankerous man because he seemed to have few, if any, redeeming qualities and she was unhappy when, on the third day of their visit, John left her to chase a fugitive back in Nebraska and she and the boys were stuck there with an equally unhappy Bobby Singer.

She understood they needed money but being abandoned in a remote house with a strange, grumpy Alpha was not her preferred choice of circumstances.

Bobby seemed to find fault with anything she did, whether it was her cooking or her cleaning or, really, just about anything she did and he was equally short with Dean and Sam, grunting complaints about them constantly being underfoot or noisy or whatever other irritation he could mutter under his breath when any of them were in his vicinity.

For a few days it felt like she had been trapped in some particularly loathsome level of hell but she gradually came to the slow realisation that Bobby Singer grumbled mainly because he enjoyed grumbling. It was his interactions with her boys that slowly convinced her that the old Alpha was all bark and no bite, particularly his relationship with Dean. Her eldest son was a bold, confident pup who already knew he was just about the cutest thing on two legs and had already learned to use his cheeky grin and huge green eyes to his advantage.

Mary had spent five years deliberately building Dean's confidence, giving him all the psychological weapons she could to face a world she dreaded would be cruel to him. She had taught him to be irrepressible and self-assured and at five years old he had never experienced rejection or cruelty or indifference. 

Dean fully expected Bobby to like him because, in his experience, everybody liked him. So whenever Bobby grumbled at him, Dean just laughed and assumed Bobby was just teasing him. When Bobby was short with him, Dean just shrugged it off as just a weird way of showing affection because Dean couldn't even imagine anyone failing to find him charming. And because the quieter, more studious Sam always took his lead from his older brother, Sam also seemed to believe Bobby was only 'pretending' to be a 'grumpy guts'.

And the oddest thing, Mary decided, after living in the Singer house for a week was that it seemed that the boys were right.

Time after time she'd protectively come running when she heard Bobby snapping at her adored pups only to find the boys smiling and the side of Bobby's mouth twitching with repressed humor as he grumpily declared them a pair of "idjuts."

When John arrived to collect them at the end of the second week, to Mary's surprise she realised she was sorry to be leaving.

~

For the next ten months they moved from town to town, John leaving them in bottom dollar motel rooms as he disappeared for days at a time.

Mary tried to remain upbeat and positive. She understood they had no money to put a deposit on a house or apartment and, in any case, that John's work required a level of mobility that would be constrained if he had to work within a radius around wherever they settled. Yet it was hard for her, living alone with two demanding pups with barely enough money to put food on the table. John assured her that all it would take was a few good commissions to set them up somewhere better but the work was thin on the ground that year and working alone wasn't conducive to John being offered the better cases by the bail bondsmen.

Lonely and a little desperate, Mary cautiously contacted her mother.

Deanna Campbell was either genuinely unaware of her husband's actions or had chosen the path of deliberate ignorance. She assured Mary that 'of course' she and the pups were welcome in Lawrence and that now the 'unfortunate business' of the teenage Alpha and his uncontrollable rut rage had faded a little from people's memory it was even possible that John might be able to visit the town though Deanna doubted there was any possibility of him regaining his former position.

The problem, she advised Mary with seemingly genuine sorrow, wasn't with John but that no one in Lawrence trusted Alphas anymore.

"Your late Aunt Amy's house has been empty for a while," Deanna told her. "It's on the edge of town, with a bit of land and no immediate neighbors. It would be a good safe place for your pups and although it's a bit far from town, it's still within the township so the schoolbus would still have to call there."

It was the mention of the school bus that firmed Mary's resolve. Dean and Sam couldn't continue to grow up in motel rooms, moving from town to town. They needed a home, a yard to play in like normal pups and, most importantly, they needed to start school.

When John returned to collect them, over a week later, with the intention to move them to yet another motel in yet another town, Mary put her foot down and told him she instead wanted to return to Lawrence until such time as he found them an actual home to live in together.

"You can visit us between hunts," she assured him. "But I don't think any of us would be safe if you actually tried to live in Lawrence again so this is a temporary solution, that's all. Just a breathing space until we get back on our feet again."

And although John hated the idea, he didn't have a better one.

"Just a temporary solution," he agreed, but they both knew the decision to separate, no matter how briefly, would irreparably change their relationship forever.


	19. Chapter Sixteen

It was almost impossible for Betas to know whether their sons would present as Alphas until a year or two after they reached puberty. A rare few, such as the precocious Crowley, presented almost immediately and all those early presenters tended to do so before they even reached their teens as though they had sprung from the womb with all the necessary hormonal changes already present and just lying dormant inside them.

In the normal manner of things, however, a pup who was destined to be an Alpha entered puberty like any other boy but over the next year or two, surges of testosterone gradually activated the double-recessive Alpha gene they carried. An Alpha pup tended to enter puberty aged anywhere between 14 to 16 and, within a couple of years of that happening, they would then go through the two week fever of presentation and emerge displaying the physical characteristics of their designation such as their teeth sharpening into points and the red phosphorescence in their eyes. Then for the following two or three years, as testosterone flooded their bodies, they further developed their unmistakable Alpha appearance. Because Alphas came from a wide gene pool, their physical characteristics varied in height, appearance and colouring but they all were invariably densely muscular of build.

Not so the Alpha Primáres.

An average Alpha Primá, though usually taller than a Beta, was rarely significantly muscular in appearance. Most Primáres had the lean musculature of a runner rather than the heavy mass of a fighter and they had a body type that leant itself more to wearing Armani than armour. Whenever Cain had a meeting with the Primáres of his sub-packs it looked more like a board meeting than a gathering of the Packs.

Alpha Primáres didn't rely on muscle for strength. There was no correlation between their physical power and their build. Their strength had a more preternatural source, something that defied any amount of scientific explanation by the puzzled Beta scientists. Also, because of their limited gene pool on their sire's sides they tended to share a somewhat uniform appearance of chocolate brown hair and eyes because those colourations were dominant genes.

At the time of Cain's rule, only two Primáres differed significantly from that norm. One was Gabriel who was short, with golden brown hair and matching eyes. The other was Cain's youngest pup, Castiel with his near black hair and intense blue eyes.

At twelve, Castiel was still more likely to be found with his face in a book than participating in any attempt at social interaction. The only two members of the Pack he spent any significant time with were his parents. Castiel spent hours shadowing his Sire as he visited his beehives, both the man and his pup communing silently with nature. They rarely conversed with each other on those occasions, just sharing odd soft smiles of shared pleasure as they wandered through the hives together.

But, as much as he enjoyed his time with his Sire, it was the time he spent with his mother that he treasured most.

Castiel spent hours sitting in his mother's private rooms listening to his stories about the history of the Packs, fascinated by Chuck's tales of the Omadonna and eagerly questioning him about every aspect of the old legends.

"One day you'll have your own Pack," Chuck told him, "And I promise you that your Omegá will be so beautiful that the first time you meet him it will be as though time has stopped. Everything else will fade around you and all you will see is his face and all you will smell is his scent and all you will hear will be the thundering of your own heart as though it could leap out of your chest in happiness that such a perfect creature will be your mate."

"I want him to look like you," Castiel replied loyally. "You're perfect."

"You're a sweet pup," Chuck chuckled, "but I think you're a little prejudiced."

Castiel just shrugged. His mother WAS perfect in his opinion. Much better than his oldest brother Raphael's gorgeous new bride, Mateo. Castiel always endeavoured to emulate his sire's habit of retaining an impression of calm when faced with difficult people but even Cain found Raphael's highly-strung and excitable Spanish bride exhausting.

Besides, as much as he adored his mother and loved listening about the Omegáres of ancient times, he wasn't particularly interested in the idea of having a mate anyway. At twelve even the thought of having a Beta girlfriend sounded like more trouble than it was worth and the idea of kissing anyone was pretty 'yuck'.

He certainly couldn't imagine ever wanting to behave like Balthazar who had only returned from Norway the previous summer, having chosen to remain in school there after Chuck had returned home.

His brother was now seventeen and had recently emerged from the seclusion of his presentation as a randy little bastard who was busily flirting his way into the hearts and beds of most of the teenage Betas in the Pack. Sometimes he seduced several of them simultaneously.

Cain alternated between blaming Gabriel's influence and Chuck's permissive attitudes for his Alpha son's loose behaviour. Cain was sure the fault lay with one or the other of them since, living in a Pack with Cain's calming pheromones, Balthazar's behaviour couldn't be attributed to rut rage.

"I know you stayed in Europe for an education," Cain grumbled, when Balthazar emerged one morning with so many love bites on his neck it looked like he'd been participating in a vampiric orgy, "but I had hoped it would be an intellectual one."

Balthazar pondered this, then grinned. "I'm an Alpha, dad. Intellectual pursuits aren't really my thing. I prefer to play to my strengths and stick to the things I'm really good at. Like this morning. I had a ménage a..." He paused a moment. "What's the French word for twelve?"

Castiel alternated between being fascinated and horrified by his brother. He was mystified that so many of the young Betas clearly found Balthazar irresistible. Chuck had carefully raised all of his pups to see sex between consenting adults to be perfectly natural and free from shame so Castiel's discomfort wasn't based in prudery. 

It wasn't even due to his age, although that was the primary reason he still found the whole idea of sex pretty unsanitary and disgusting. The main reason he disliked Balthazar's behaviour was that Castiel's habit of reading old legends had already begun to create a fledgling belief that romance was a far more noble pursuit than mere sexual gratification. 

With the kind of grandiose certainty that only the very young are capable of, Castiel determined that, when the time came, whether he was pursuing a Beta Wife or an Omegá mate, unless he actually fell in love with them, like the heroes in his books, he'd rather not bother bedding them at all.


	20. Chapter Seventeen

Dressed in her oldest clothes, with her hair constantly escaping its rough ponytail to tumble around her sweaty, dirty face, Mary was hardly in the mood for any visitor. The fact the unexpected caller arrived in a police car just added to her irritation. Whilst the house had the potential to be a nice (temporary) home, it was dusty and filthy with disuse and Mary was certain half the local wildlife had moved in since her Aunt had died, given the amount of mouse droppings and spiderwebs she was trying to clean. It was a mammoth job, not helped by the fact she was constantly tripping over her pups who were insisting on trying to 'help'. She'd finally just managed to convince them they would be helping her best by playing out in the yard by themselves when the car pulled up in front of the porch and a man climbed out wearing a Sheriff's uniform.

The man who arrived at her door was a complete stranger to her, clearly no original Lawrence inhabitant (so poor Jacob was still only a deputy, she thought, absently) and whilst he was a big heavy man, his heft was more that of fat than muscle. He had a round, florid face that spoke of Eireish origins and, indeed, though he spoke with a deep Kansas drawl he smilingly introduced himself as Sheriff Seamus O'Hare. His eyes were flat and cold, however, and Mary had no illusion that this was in any way a 'friendly' visit.

"Come in," she said calmly, throwing the door open to reveal the chaos inside. "You'll have to excuse the mess."

O'Hare accepted the invitation, almost tripping over Mary's mop and bucket as he lumbered into the kitchen and seated himself heavily at the table which was, fortunately, one of the first places Mary had cleaned. He leaned back in his chair and sniffed deeply. "Lemon and vinegar," he identified approvingly. "My wife swears by them too."

Though it was said innocently enough, Mary knew full well what O'Hare was truly trying to scent.

"He's not here," she snapped. "There's just me and the pups."

O'Hare nodded. "Campbell told me as much," he acknowledged. "It's just a friendly visit. Introduce myself. Check everything's fine."

"He's still my husband," Mary clarified. "He WILL be visiting between jobs."

The Sherrif nodded. "Campbell told me that too. Man's got the right to come here if he wants to. Law says so and that's what I'm paid to uphold."

She wasn't fooled by his words of easy acceptance. His eyes were still dark and unfriendly and a slight sneer was playing at the edge of his mouth. 

"There's a back road into town swings pretty close to this place," he continued. "Probably best if the Al...if your husband comes and goes by that road, don't you think? Saves any... misunderstandings."

"You're saying John isn't to enter the town," Mary responded coldly.

O'Hare shrugged. "Not saying anything of the kind. Would be illegal of me to say that, wouldn't it? Just making a friendly suggestion, that's all. Save us all any... unpleasantness."

"Unpleasantness," Mary repeated slowly. "I suppose that's one word for it."

"Heard about what happened," O'Hare said. "Bad business. That Morrison girl left town. Felt she had to, given she had a pup inside her. Worried folks might blame the pup for what its Sire did, maybe." He glanced out of the window to where Dean and Sam were currently running around the yard. "Would be a real shame, that, if folks blamed a pup for its Sire's behaviour."

Mary went cold at the subtle threat. "It would be monstrous AND illegal," she snapped.

"Of course," O'Hare agreed, easily enough. "And it's my job to keep things nice and legal round here. Looks like you have a couple of real fine boys, there, Mrs Winchester. Folk round here want to show 'em a real nice welcome, specially since they're the good Minister's grandpups. Let's keep it that way. Keep things nice and civilized."

~

It wasn't until the following Alfarsday that Mary gave in to her mother's pressure and finally took the pups to meet their Grandsire. She point blank refused to attend the Chapel in the morning but Deanna agreed it was probably best for her to come to the house anyway. She was going to extend an invitation to several of the local families to join them for lunch. It would, she said, be an opportunity for the boys to meet some of the local pups in advance of attending school on the Lunasday. It went unspoken that Samuel Campbell would probably welcome his daughter with more decorum in front of an audience.

Both Mary and Samuel failed to completely hide their mutual antipathy as they met for the first time in almost six years. The years had not softened Campbell. If anything the fire of religious fervour blazed hotter in his eyes and he greeted the knowledge of little Sam's name with all the distain Mary expected. Still, although his initial stiffness towards the pups was genuine (rather than the pretended grumpiness of Bobby Singer) Dean blithey ignored his stand-offishness in exactly the same manner and, when told the stern, forbidding man glowering at him was his Grandsire, responded by exuberently throwing his arms around the startled Minister and excitedly exclaiming, "Hiya, Gran'pops. I'm Dean an' this is Sam. Sam's my bruvver, pops, so that means you're his pops too." He announced this solemnly, as though unsure whether the man fully understood the situation.

All the gathered adults laughed with delight, declaring Dean the 'cutest pup ever', a phrase Mary decided ought probably to be trademarked by her oldest pup, and Campbell was left with no choice other than to pat Dean awkwardly on the back and accept the new moniker with a pained grimace.

Mary's welcome back into the fold by her Parents' guests was cool but remarkably civilised. John's name wasn't even mentioned and though Mary chaffed against the obvious assumption of everyone that she had 'come to her senses' and had returned to Lawrence through a sense of penitent regret, it served her (and her pups) well for the Betas of Lawrence to perceive her as a lost sheep who needed to be guided back into the flock. It was enough, she decided, that they'd finally realise their misconceptions when John finally resolved the family's financial issues and they left Lawrence again, this time for good.

In the meantime it was good to see her pups so content. Dean was playing a game of tag with half a dozen pups his own age. Sam was sitting alone, reading a book in the shade of an oak tree, but that didn't worry her as reading was one of her youngest pup's happy places. To the side of the yard, a few older pups were kicking a ball around. The sun was shining. The food was good and...

...and then her momentary peace was shattered by her father approaching her once more.

"He bothers me," Samuel said, abruptly, frowning towards the playing pups and specifically at Dean.

Mary's heart sank but her expression remained carefully neutral. "In what way?" she enquired.

Samuel frowned thoughtfully. "Can't quite put my finger on it," he admitted. Then he pondered a little longer and said, "He's a bit...pretty for a boy, don't you think?"

Panic lurched through Mary and she had the impulse to grab her pups and run, run, run as though Hell itself was snapping at her heels, but, at that precise moment, one of the older boys deliberately kicked the ball in the direction of Sam.

The ball struck the side of Sam's face and he startled, dropped his book in the dirt, then immediately burst into loud, gulping sobs. Mary's immediate thought was the tears were more because of his now dirty book than an expression of pain, since the ball hadn't struck him particularly hard.

Dean however, turned the moment he heard Sam's initial wail, quickly sized up the situation between the bawling Sam, the dropped book, the abandoned ball and the look of smug satisfaction on the face of the boy who had kicked it and then, without any hesitation, the tiny pup marched up to the bully who was twice his height and kicked him in the shin so hard that the older pup yelped in outraged pain. 

"Thas my BRUVVER!" Dean yelled, clenching his fists and clearly vibrating with rage.

Before Dean could punch the boy (or, more importantly, be struck in retaliation) Mary swooped in and, grabbing him around the waist, lifted him up in her arms and then turned her furious gaze on the older pup.

"It was just an accident," he muttered, cowering slightly under her fierce glare.

"Then you can go and apologise to Sam, can't you," Mary retorted sharply. The boy nodded sullenly and, limping, went to offer his reluctant apology to Sam, who had already stopped crying because he'd realised his book was just dusty rather than muddy.

Mary walked back towards her father, still carrying Dean.

Samuel's expression had changed from its earlier vague suspicion to a look Mary could only interpret as smug, satisfied approval.

"You should have called THIS one 'Sam'," he announced, then he actually broke into a wide proud smile towards his Grandpup. "Come on, pup, time a little man like you learned how to use a grill."

And though Mary was flooded with relief at her Sire's abrupt change of attitude, and silently breathed a prayer of thanks to the All-Father for such a timely intercession, it struck her that even Beta men clearly suffered from the same, stupid pride in overt shows of 'masculinity' as Alphas did.

~

Mary managed to gain employment as a waitress at a local restaurant and her pups settled into their school. 

Dean loved school, primarily because he was gregarious and he loved having a whole group of pups to play with. He was bright enough and had no problems studying (not that the lessons were particularly onerous in the first year anyway and, given that Dean was already a year older than his classmates, he found everything almost too easy) but the reasons he thought school was great had little to do with books and a lot more to do with his easy personality and the way he quickly gained a position of popularity amongst the other pupils.

Sam entered the school with Dean (since Dean was a year late starting his education) so they shared lessons and whilst another pup might have found fault in being expected to learn in the same class as a younger sibling, Dean loved that he wasn't separated from his brother. Sam was far quieter and less prone to put himself into social situations. Dean accepted his brother was different and, instead of urging him to participate in the fun and games, protected Sam's decision to be more aloof by defending him loudly (and sometimes physically) if anyone dared to criticise him. Soon their classmates learned that the only way to stay in the circle of Dean's friendship was to be kind and respectful to Sam.

The first time Mary was called to the school to deal with a 'problem' that had apparently risen with Dean, she almost did so with her suitcases already packed because her first and only thought was that somehow, someone had found out.

She had found it difficult to find a way to explain to her pup that his body had to remain 'secret'. The last thing she wanted was to give Dean any cause to believe there was anything 'wrong' with him and he was far too young for her to even try to explain the different designations let alone anything regarding sexuality. But it was imperative that Dean understood to conceal himself from his classmates and teachers. In the end, after a lot of soul searching, Mary explained to Dean that he was 'special' and that he had to keep himself covered not out of shame but out of kindness to everyone else because they would be sad and jealous if they understood just how special Dean was.

"Like Jo," Dean agreed wisely. "Jo was mean to Sam 'cos he's special too."

"Yes," Mary agreed with relief. Ellen's daughter Jo was a sweet pup but had sometimes picked on Sam because he used 'big' words. Sam was frighteningly clever in some ways and his vocabulary at Five was like that of an older teenager (though his pronunciation skills were understandably far less fluent than his mental understanding of what he was trying to say) and Jo had often teased Sam about it (unless Dean was in the vicinity, of course).

So Mary was as sure as she could be that Dean would be careful but, still, when she received the call from the school she immediately assumed the worst. Dean was only a little boy, after all, so could hardly be blamed if he'd somehow made a mistake that had revealed his designation.

But the call was nothing to do with him being an Omega. 

Quite the opposite.

"Don't misunderstand me, Mrs Winchester. Dean is a lovely pup. All the teachers are really fond of him and the other pupils adore him," the head-teacher advised her carefully. "So please don't take this the wrong way but I think, perhaps, Dean possibly takes after his father a little too much. Whilst I think its perfectly charming that Dean looks after Sam so much, and I certainly don't condone bullying, I think reacting to someone stealing Sam's lunch by punching them in the nose was somewhat of an over-reaction."

Mary was so relieved that she responded with a highly inappropriate burst of laughter. "Don't you dare blame my son," she retorted. "It's appalling your teachers allowed someone to bully Sam like that in the first place. Get your own house in order before you criticise mine. I assure you, if I saw someone steal Sam's lunch I'd probably punch them too."

The head-teacher glowered at her, his lips pursing into an expression that suggested he was reassessing the situation and wondering whether Dean's behavioural issues ought actually to be laid at the feet of his mother rather than his Sire.

Mary took Dean home, since he was suspended for the rest of the week. On the way, she stopped at the store and bought a pint of ice-cream to go with the celebratory apple pie she intended to bake for her brave, wonderful pup.

~

Over the next eighteen months, John only visited his family three times.

Whilst Mary understood it had to be awful for him to have to approach the house from the backroads in the cover of darkness and that it was difficult for an active man like him being then stuck within the boundaries of the property until the time came for him to leave again, she was still saddened that he made so little effort to be with his family.

She didn't doubt he loved his pups and, when John came to her bed, she was convinced his passion for her was still strong. Yet, there was a distance in their relationship, one that, when she really thought about it, wasn't truly related to her return to Lawrence at all. What now seemed a huge chasm had actually begun as a slow, insidious creep since the very first time John had gone off with Bill Harvelle on a hunt.

Again, she found herself wondering whether it was an 'Alpha' thing. 

As much as John liked the 'idea' of being a family man, it was increasingly clear that what John truly LOVED was the thrill of the chase. He wasn't hunting because they needed the money (though, obviously, they did) but because it was something he thrived at. Bounty hunting satisfied all of John's instincts. He revelled in using his strength and prowess to track and capture a fugitive. 

When she wondered if she was being unfair, it didn't take much common sense to figure out that, since her own job, low paid as it was, paid for the bills and food for her and the pups and they were living rent-free in the house, eighteen months of successful hunting (and John had proudly announced his various successes to her) with only himself to support on the road, MUST have allowed John to build up at least enough savings to put the deposit down on a house for them.

Yet he never made any suggestion that Mary should start preparing to leave Lawrence and the longer he left it unsaid, the more Mary wondered whether she even wanted to.

She lay at night thinking about it, lying alone in her bed and missing John so much.

But maybe not TOO much.

And, a voice in her head whispered sometimes, in the night, when it was dark and quiet and everything seemed suddenly so clear with nothing but the pale sheen of moonlight illuminating her bedroom, 'Maybe, if John goes away one time and doesn't come back, ever, it would be better for Dean.'

In the night, when any dream felt able to become reality, Mary could imagine that Dean's presentation could somehow be concealed and his designation then remain hidden from the whole world forever as long as no-one...

# John #

...ever found out.


	21. Chapter Eighteen

"I'm Meg."

Startled, Castiel raised his eyes from his book and peered curiously at the girl who'd interrupted his studying. She looked a year or two older than him, he thought, 15 or 16 at most but then he looked at her dark eyes, that seemed ageless and knowing and wondered if, perhaps, she was older than she looked.

"Hello," he said, cautiously.

Living in Cain's Pack Hall was not unlike living in a Stately Home that was open to public visitors. Although certain parts of it were marked as private and out of bounds, inevitably some more curious people ignored the family's polite requests and encroached on private areas before they were rounded up and escorted out by an Alpha guard. Cain hated the idea of locks, feeling that since only pack members could enter the Pack Hall it would be rude to physically bar them from his home. (Although it should be noted there were triple locks and posted guards around Chuck's private rooms, a dichotomy that Cain made no apologies for).

So seeing a complete stranger in the family's private garden where Castiel often retreated to for privacy wasn't a unique experience. It was, however, a highly unusual one.

"There's only one seat here," he said. 

It was a plain statement of fact and not necessarily meant as a rebuff but he honestly wouldn't be averse to the strange girl taking it as such and stomping off in a huff. 

Instead, she simply sat down on the grass in front of him. "I've sat in worse places," she said. 

Castiel shrugged. He doubted it would be long before one of the Alphas came to 'rescue' him. While he waited, he looked at her curiously.

"I don't know you," he said. Whilst he rarely socialised, he knew at least the faces of all the pack members, both in the primary pack and also the sub packs, and he supposed he should at least recognise this girl, with her tumbling dark hair and pale, pretty face, if he'd ever seen her before. 

An explanation suddenly occurred to him. "Are you a...friend...of Balthazar?"

She laughed gaily. "That skank? I like my cunt. I wouldn't let his cock anywhere near it. I can't even imagine how many diseases he's probably carrying in it. Actually, I'm surprised it hasn't fallen off with overuse."

Although, now he was fourteen, Castiel's prior dismissal of sex as something disgusting had been replaced with healthy teenage curiosity, he'd wondered the same thing about his promiscuous Alpha brother. Just not quite in the same florid language.

"I don't know you," Castiel repeated awkwardly, confused now as to how that was possible because Meg's accurate description of Balthazar clearly suggested she was living in the primary pack.

"I'm new," she replied.

Castiel looked at her with fresh interest. New was equally puzzling but in an intriguing way. Hardly anyone arrived to join a pack, except Omegáres, obviously, and with that thought understanding occurred.

"You're the girl who bit Benny," he announced.

Meg flushed. "I'm never going to live that down, am I? It's not like I really hurt him."

"He's got a scar. A big one. My mother says there's nothing as germ-ridden as human saliva so bites always scar."

"He's an Alpha. He'll survive," Meg said, unapologetically. "Serves him right for touching Josh."

"He was trying to rescue him," Castiel reminded her. 

Chuck had told him the story of what had happened. A young adult Free Alpha named Benny Lafitte had come across a homeless boy, who had just suddenly presented as an Omegá, being set upon by a horny Alpha teenager. The only reason the Omegá wasn't already on his knees getting mounted by the time Benny stumbled on the scene was another homeless kid, a fierce Beta girl, was frantically trying to keep the Alpha away with a baseball bat. 

After Benny had beaten the Alpha boy sufficiently to drive him off, he'd reached for the sobbing Omegá to check he was unhurt, only for the Beta girl to attack HIM. Benny had disarmed her, as gently as possible, then turned back to the Omegá, Joshua, and the girl had leaped onto his back and sunk her teeth into his shoulder in a last ditch attempt to 'save' her friend.

"Well I didn't know that at the time," the feisty Beta snapped. "For all I knew he was just another raping fucker wanting to get his rocks off."

Castiel pondered this, then nodded his understanding. "Benny said he had to bring you here because you didn't believe him when he said he was going to bring Joshua to a Pack for safety."

"That's right," Meg agreed. "Wanted to see it with my own eyes. Could have been a lie."

"You're a Free Beta."

"So they say."

Castiel frowned, puzzled. "But you've stayed. Why haven't you left yet? You know now that Benny didn't lie and that Joshua is safe here. Why are you still here?" Castiel blurted, genuinely curious.

"Wow. Everyone told me you were pretty crap at conversation but you're worse than I imagined. You have absolutely no idea how offensive that sounded, do you?"

Castiel flushed with embarrassment. "My people skills are...rusty," he admitted. "I wasn't intending to offend."

"It would take more than that, sweet cheeks," Meg laughed. "To a street rat like me, any sentence that doesn't include 'fuck off' is practically poetry."

Castiel frowned in confusion, "What's a 'street rat'?"

"Someone who probably has no business sitting here, chatting with the crown prince."

"I'm not a prince."

"Trust me, you're as close as a girl like me is going to come to one so leave my illusions intact, CP."

"Cee Pee?" Castiel asked carefully, frowning with confusion.

"CP. Crown Prince. It's what I'm going to call you. Deal with it."

Castiel blinked at her uncertainly. "Okay," he said, slowly.

"So tell me, CP, what's the crack around here?"

"The crack?"

"You know, the down low."

Castiel considered for a moment or two then asked, seriously, "I don't know this language you keep speaking. Can you ask me again in Inglais?"

Meg laughed uproariously. "You're so funny, CP."

"I am?"

"Seriously," she confirmed. "I think we're going to be great friends."

Castiel offered her a beaming smile. "I don't have any other friends," he confessed. "Nobody in the Pack likes me very much."

"Bullshit," Meg replied decisively. "They're just a bit scared of you. I think it's your eyes, to be honest."

"What's wrong with my eyes?"

"Nothing, stupid. There's nothing wrong with any part of you. You are a fine bit of real estate, CP. If you were a bit older I'd prove it to you," she said, with a dirty laugh. "But apparently those big beautiful blue eyes of yours creep the fuck out of most folk around here because, usually, the only time they see a Primá with blue eyes is the moment before he smites their asses."

"It's not fair. I can't help the colour of my eyes," Castiel griped.

"Sucks to be you," Meg said, less than sympathetically. "Just wait. Couple more years and you really WILL be able to smite their asses. Then see how much they suddenly want to be your friend after all. Not that friends like that are worth having anyway," she added sagely. "Most people are pretty crap, CP. Problem is you can't always tell the good ones from the bad. You've just got to keep sifting through all the turds 'til you find a friend worth keeping. Then you damn well fight to the death for them, cos something that rare's worth dying for."

"Like Joshua?"

"Too right. Little scrapper, that one. Never would have taken him for an Omegá before it happened. Thought he was just a cute looking kid who'd been thrown out like me. Never realised he'd run away from home 'cos he knew what was coming. But it's not like I ever saw him without his pants, you know and, anyway, I'd heard of Omegáres, sure, but it's not like I'd ever seen one. I actually, well you'll laugh, but I thought Omegáres and Primáres were just stories, really, like Unicorns or something. I nearly shit my pants when it happened and then, maybe it was the smell or something, but that little Alpha fucker just came out of nowhere and all I could think of was that I'd rather die fighting him than live with knowing I'd run away. Stupid, huh?"

Before Castiel had a chance to reply to this, one of Cain's Alphas, Tobias, arrived in the garden looking furious and out of breath. He looked momentarily relieved when he spotted Meg, then glared at her briefly, muttering under his breath about 'damned Free Betas' but when he spoke out loud he did so directly to Castiel.

"I'm really sorry. Someone spotted her entering the private area but by the time they raised the alarm she was out of sight and it's taken me awhile to find her because I checked the bed chambers first. I'll get her out of here for you and make sure she learns the Pack rules."

Meg rolled her eyes and rose to her feet, offering Castiel an indifferent shrug and a wry smile.

Castiel didn't even realise he'd decided to lie before the words came out of his mouth. "It's fine, Tobias. This is my friend, Meg. I invited her here but forgot to put her on the approved visitor list. I'm sorry I put you to so much trouble."

The Alpha looked surprised but just shrugged off Castiel's apology. "No problem. I'll just add her to the list for you when I get back to the office."

"If you'd be so kind," Castiel agreed evenly.

Meg waited for the Alpha to leave, then grinned at Castiel. "You're cool, CP."

Castiel blinked at her. "I assure you, I'm perfectly comfortable. It's a pleasant temperature today."

Meg laughed delightedly and, though he wasn't sure what he had said to amuse her, he returned her smile with one of his own.

"We're going to be such great friends, CP, I can tell," she said. "It's like I just found my very own, personal unicorn."


	22. Chapter Nineteen

John Winchester prided himself on being a family man.

He carried pictures of his wife and pups on his phone and in his wallet and proudly showed them to fellow hunters and even strangers he met in cafes, bars and motels. It warmed his heart when people exclaimed how beautiful Mary was and how good-looking his pups were. He'd even been know to show the pictures to some of the fugitives he'd captured, pleased to be able to produce concrete evidence he was more than just the brutal Alpha who had taken them down. He was actually a husband and father and all around good guy.

It made him feel proud.

He considered it was his business to be a good family man, regardless of how some Betas saw him as little more than a barely house-trained animal.

John had found it difficult in the first few months after Bill's death. He'd become accustomed to the freedom of knowing he could just concentrate on hunting, in the knowledge that Mary and the pups were safe and well back at the Harvelle place. After Bill's death, the months of trailing his family around behind him had grated on his nerves. He'd hated the idea of them being abandoned in rundown motels, the other occupants of which were probably lowlifes who posed a potential danger to his wife and pups.

In fairness, John couldn't imagine anything worse than harm coming to his family but he'd also hated having to actually spend time worrying about them instead of just getting on with his work. They stole too much of his concentration and that was a dangerous thing for a hunter.

So as much as he had disliked the idea of Mary taking the pups to Lawrence, he had figured it was the best solution for all of them. Although just the thought of Samuel Campbell made neon warnings flash in his head, he knew perfectly well that it was only the presence of he, John Winchester, Alpha, who lit touchpaper under Campbell's religious zeal. He'd accepted, possibly less reluctantly than Mary imagined, that she and the pups would be safe in Lawrence as long as John didn't accompany them there.

He'd visited a few times, of course, but Mary was coping well and the pups were happy and healthy, so John felt no particular compulsion to pointlessly hang around keeping an eye on them. The way he saw it, being a good husband was about providing for his family and ensuring their safety and, since the family was doing fine, he was doing his job as a husband just fine too.

He was free to get on with his other job. The fun one. The one that made his heart pound and his blood rush. The one that soothed the Alpha under his skin.

And, usually, whenever John felt the inclination to drive all the way to Lawrence to see Mary and the boys, he'd pull out his photos, reassure himself they were doing just fine, and instead ask the Bail Bondsmen for another case.

Naturally, he never showed those photos to any of the numerous Beta women he bedded as he travelled around the country doing the job he loved. It wasn't that he was being dishonest. He never made those women any promises of anything other than a big cock and a good time. He just didn't want to mix business with pleasure.

He never considered these dalliances to be acts of unfaithfulness.

John was just satisfying a biological need. Having casual sex was no different, in his opinion, than eating, drinking or taking a shit. Just as he didn't want to be hindered on the job by hunger or the need to piss, he didn't want the itch in his cock to prove a distraction. So he reckoned it was just good sense to take any offered opportunities to slake that particular thirst, whenever they presented themselves.

It amused him, sometimes, to experience the odd polarity of opinion he met in Betas of both sexes. Male Betas responded to John's Alpha either with hostility or cowed fear. Beta women were different. Whilst a lot of them found him frightening, there were a significant proportion who were completely fascinated. Many of those who desired him let him know in no uncertain terms that they were available. He tended to meet that type primarily in the bars he frequented. But what really interested John were the women who 'pretended' not to find him attractive. He'd see the way they wet their lips and darted secretive glances towards his groin even if, on the surface, they were often feigning indifference or even contempt.

Those were the women John had an almost irresistable urge to bed. The ones who affected disinterest and turned their noses up at him, even as _his_ keen nose sniffed the juices of arousal in their cunts. All Beta women were whores for Alpha cock, he'd decided, the only question was the price of admittance. For some it was the monetary price of a few drinks at a bar. For others it was enough just to offer to satisfy their curiosity of how it felt to be taken by an Alpha.

John's fundamental lack of respect for Beta women as a whole did not, obviously, extend to his wife.

Mary was different. Pure. Mary wouldn't even look at another man, let alone allow someone to sniff around her like a randy dog. John kept Mary, his wife, the mother of his pups, on a pedestal of perfection and never once considered any other woman to be even comparable to her.

Until the day he met Kate.

~

John frequently hunted his fugitives alone. That made the job more difficult sometimes, admittedly, but had the bonus of being more profitable so the inconvenience more than paid for itself. Occasionally, however, there was just no way to get the job done without a partner.

His old friend, Bobby Singer, ran an unofficial 'helpline' for the Bounty Hunting community. In exchange for a small fee and the gift of the odd bottle of single malt whenever a hunter passed in his vicinity, Bobby acted as a way for lone wolves like John to put out a call for assistance whenever they were working a particularly difficult case.

John was on the trail of a couple of mid-level drug dealers who had done a bunk after posting bail in Omaha. They'd proven to have deep pockets, which had enabled them to be unusually elusive, and he'd followed them all the way to Minnesota before giving up, calling Bobby, and asking for some help. Bobby had sent a grizzled old hunter named Rufus Turner to assist him and, though hating having to split the commission, John was grateful for his temporary partner.

For one thing, Rufus proved to be even more wily than the fugitives and used his years of experience and knowledge of the area to anticipate their next move. He did it so well that the two Bounty Hunters got ahead of their quarry and cornered them at their next pit stop. Secondly, Rufus proved to be pretty invaluable when John carelessly got himself shot during the ensuing capture.

Alone, John might have bled out. He certainly wouldn't have managed to get the drug dealers into custody. So he was grateful that Rufus was there to finish the job, drop John at the nearest hospital in Windom, then drive off with the fugitives to collect the bounty. Rufus even upheld their deal and wired John his half of the commission, less a fee for the valeting of his bloodstained car.

It wasn't the first time John had been shot. It was the first time he had been seriously hurt, though. Like all Alphas, John had remarkable healing abilities but he wasn't invulnerable. The bullet had entered his abdomen, shredded through his guts and had punctured his stomach. A Beta would have been dead of sepsis within hours. The injuries were survivable for an Alpha but John still faced at least a couple of weeks in hospital and a few more months before he'd be back to hunting.

The hospital bills alone were going to put a severe dent in his savings account, not to mention the cost of a motel room for the period of his recovery.

John seriously considered calling Mary when he first woke up after surgery and realised the extent of his injuries but then dismissed the idea as pointless. He didn't want to upset her with the news he'd been shot. He didn't want her pulling his pups out of school and charging to his bedside in a panic and, anyway, returning to Lawrence with her to spend the months of his recuperation stuck in Samuel Campbell's hellhole of a town was hardly going to be conducive to his recovery, he figured, so after a few minutes consideration he put his phone back onto his bedside table unused.

His nurse, a young sweet-faced Beta woman, noticed and expressed her concern with a gentle inquiry. "Is there no-one you can call? No family? You shouldn't be alone at a time like this, Mr Winchester."

John might have snapped it was none of her goddamned business, except she really _did_ have the sweetest face and, for the first time in years, he saw nothing in the woman's expression to take exception to. She portrayed no reaction at all to his designation. No hatred or fear, not even any lust. Just gentle professional concern and a look of genuine kindness in her eyes. She was the first woman, other than Mary, that appeared to see John as a man, rather than an Alpha, so he bit back his instinct to snap at her, lest he create a predjudice where none existed.

Over the next couple of weeks, John spent a lot of time in the young nurse's company. He was the only patient in the intensive care ward, except for an old man who was near-comatose and needed only basic care, so it was easy for her to give him a lot of her time. And, since he was bored and lonely, he welcomed the attention and the fact she was a pretty little thing didn't hurt matters in the slightest.

Her name was Kate Milligan and she was just nineteen years old. She was from a family of liberal Betas who held no tolerance for the teachings of the Church Of Abel, which at least explained why she didn't have any negative reaction to the fact he was an Alpha. Sure, he was a bit fascinating to her just because he WAS an Alpha, but John was a mature, handsome, virile man with a lot of natural charm and she was just a young small-town girl who was thrilled to listen to his stories about hunting as though he was painting her a vivid picture of some world beyond her true comprehension.

It was refreshing for John, and it's possible he deliberately encouraged the fledgling crush she was developing because it stroked his ego, but unlike any of his 'dalliances' he was perfectly up front with her about the existence of Mary and the pups.

John wasn't absolutely sure why he was honest with her. He told himself it was because his interest in her was only platonic but even he knew that was a lie. Her innocent virginity was like catnip to him, as alluring a siren call as Mary's had been, and although Kate's innocent crush was slowly being replaced by the scent of a more mature and physical desire she was clearly reluctant to act on her attraction, not because he was an Alpha but because he was married.

Girls like Kate didn't have affairs with married men.

John knew and respected this about her.

Of course, this just made her more attractive to him.

~

John was discharged from the hospital after two weeks which was possibly a little too soon but, since he didn't have any medical insurance and could just about walk on his own two feet, the doctors didn't argue his insistence on leaving. He moved into a nearby motel to continue his recovery.

Kate visited him several times a week to 'check his wounds' and offer to do his shopping and laundry. She often arrived with pre-cooked dinners and home-baked desserts. She sometimes brought him new clothes or other gifts to 'cheer him up'. When John told her he was concerned she was spending too much time and money on him, she reassured him she was financially comfortable. The apartment she lived in had been bought for her outright by her family so it wasn't as though she had either rent or a mortgage to pay.

There was something domestic about the way she looked after him, something that spoke of a desire on her part for considerably more than an affair.

Their relationship was still platonic, though John often saw desire in her sideways glances and a confused lust clouding her otherwise innocent eyes.

He knew it would take very little effort to convince her that his marriage was on the rocks and she was naive enough that if he explained the real reason Mary hadn't visited in the hospital was that he and his wife were separated and on the verge of divorce, Kate might not see him as 'married' so much as 'soon to be single'.

But it was a big step from bedding a slut on a one-night stand.

It would, he decided, count as being 'unfaithful'.

It would be a lie, because he never had any intention of leaving his family.

It would be wrong.

He couldn't do it.

~

Kate was horrifed when John told her about the Campbell family, their rabid belief in the Church of Abel and what had happened on the night John had fled Lawrence with his pregnant wife.

She gasped when he told her Mary had left him, taken their pups and moved back to that town.

She cried when she realised the poor man couldn't even visit his own pups without fear of being lynched.

"Mary doesn't deserve you," she declared passionately and believed his answering wince was one of remembered hurt rather than shame.

She didn't expect sex to be so painful but other than the burn between her thighs, she had no regrets when John took her to bed. She knew he was a good, honest man who deserved a woman to love him and Kate was determined to be that woman. She could wait for his wedding ring. She understood that getting a divorce took time, particularly from a mate who refused to speak to you and lived in a town you were physically unable to visit.

No matter. John could move out of his motel and into her place whilst he continued his recovery and they'd sort all the legalities out later.

At least, she thought, John would have _her_ picture in his wallet by the time he was eventually able to return to work.

~

To John's surprise, he was welcomed warmly by Kate's parents when they visited and met him for the first time. Other than Kate herself, it was his first experience of meeting non-Ablest Betas and he found the difference in their attitude so unfamiliar that it was as disturbing as it was welcome. He felt wrong-footed and distrustful of the situation and admitted as much after the older Milligans left.

"Trust me, John. Absolutely no one in my family is going to care you're an Alpha. That's nothing to the Milligans. My great-aunt Anna actually had an actual Omegá pup," Kate assured him, as they sat together on the sofa in her apartment.

John's immediate reaction was disbelief. Omegáres were so rare that few people had seen one in real life but, in the way of things, just about everyone always claimed they knew someone who had.

Having grown up in a Major City, he, like many other teenage Alphas, had made frequent use of an Omegá provided to him. This was done by most City Councils as a service he'd always understood to be a mutually beneficial arrangement. Teen Alphas needed to fuck. Teen Omegáres needed to be fucked. Everyone benefited from the Council's foresight in formalising the process. But it was a teenage thing, never mentioned again after the ravages of rut rage were over, and to the best of John's knowledge, the average Beta had never met an Omegá at all.

"Seriously," she said, reaching for her phone, scrolling through her photos and then showing him a family picture. Although the picture was old, John recognised Kate's sire as a much younger man, with a tiny pup in his arms that John recognised as Kate. To the left of the photo there was a beautiful green eyed youth, draped in Omegá pants that revealed a bare pubic mound with just the shadow of a docking scar on his otherwise smooth white flesh.

John's mouth watered involuntarily at the memories invoked by the sight. "What happened to him?"

"Well, it was a problem," Kate admitted. "No one in the family believed what the Church says about Omegáres but no one wanted to break the law, either, so it was a difficult time. We had no Alphas in the immediate family, but luckily there was a distant second cousin who offered to be David's legal guardian, on paper at least, so Anna was allowed to keep him in the family until he was 16 and she absolutely refused to let any Alpha touch him. I know the law allows it, claims as soon as an Omegá presents he is legally an adult and ought to have his 'needs' taken care of, but he was just a baby, John. Anna couldn't bear the thought of him being mounted until he was a physical adult, rather than just a legal one.

"The local Town council were furious with her. They tried to charge her with abuse for failing to provide his 'needs'. She only managed to keep David by at least getting him docked. Then, instead of handing him over for training by an Alpha before he went to auction, Anna put him in her car and drove him herself directly to the nearest Pack.

"It turned out really well, though. Anna was paid some obscene amount as a bride-price by the Primá who claimed him. Much more than if she'd done as she was told by the council. Believe it or not, all this stuff people say about Primáres paying more for sexually experienced mates is complete and utter rubbish. The Primá who bought David paid twice as much because he was a virgin!"

"That's how your family became rich?"

"Well none of us were hurting after the sale, for sure. Except Anna who refused to spend a cent of the money herself. She never really got over having to sell her pup at all, regardless of having done her best by him. It felt like slavery to her."

"Omegáres have to be claimed by Alpha Primáres," John replied. "The exchange of money seems like the Omegá is being bought but, as far as I know, from a Pack perspective it's just seen as a bride-price that the Primá gives to prove he is strong and powerful and wealthy enough to care for the mate he's claiming.

"I don't know much more than that," he admitted. "I was Free Born and I've never been near any Pack Lands. It's weird about the virgin thing though. Makes you wonder about the other stuff, too, doesn't it?"

"Have you ever mounted an Omegá?"

"Never met one in my life," he said, and offered her a sincere, honest smile.

~

Two months later, Kate returned home from work and discovered John had packed his bags and left without even leaving a note.

~

A month after that, she discovered she was pregnant.


	23. Chapter Twenty

"Nope," Meg said, popping the 'p', and shaking her head in obvious disbelief. "Can't see it happening."

Castiel tried not to show his hurt at her careless dismissal but obviously failed because Meg, whose sharp eyes never missed anything important, instantly registered the doleful look in his eyes and hastened to explain herself.

"I'm not saying you can't do it, CP. Just that you can't do it."

He blinked, tried to make sense of her nonsensical statement, then shrugged helplessly.

Benny Lafitte chuckled. He was slouched against the far wall, his hip resting against a bookcase, his indolent sprawl at complete odds with the idea he was supposedly 'on guard' since the Library was a public area of the Pack Hall. But Castiel and Meg weren't anywhere that anyone from the general Pack were likely to wander into. They were deep inside the catacomb-like depths of the oldest archive rooms, so the young Alpha had nothing to do except listen to Meg and Castiel bickering.

It was a familiar tableau. Meg incessantly spouting her 'wisdom', Castiel alternating between being wounded by her sharp tongue and grasping greedily at her rare precious compliments, whilst Benny found the whole thing pretty hilarious to witness.

"It's what my Sire wants me to do. He says it's important," Castiel argued.

"Yeah, well my Sire wanted me to magically turn into an Omegá so he could sell my ass for more than a bottle of whiskey, but he was shit out of luck too," Meg said, with a dismissive shrug.

Castiel flinched. He hated it when Meg made such casual dismissal of the reason she'd been living on the streets; that she had run away from home at twelve to prevent her drunken abusive father whoring her out to fund his alcoholism. He refused to let her comment divert him from the conversation though. "You don't think I can do it?" he demanded, trying to sound defiant rather than wounded but suspecting he failed given that his voice hitched mid-sentence.

Meg scowled at him fiercely. "Of course you can do it, stupid. You just can't DO it."

Castiel returned her scowl and raised it one into a glower of genuine annoyance. "Your words make absolutely no sense to me."

Benny chuckled again. Then, when both youngsters fixed annoyed looks in his direction, he shrugged and decided to diffuse the situation. "She's just saying it's not going to happen. No way any Beta Court would allow it. It wouldn't be seen as a fair trial."

"Exactly," Meg agreed with smirk. "Can you imagine Mr Smitey McSmiteface here walking into a courthouse and the opposing counsel not instantly turning tail and running in the opposite direction? And even if they didn't, it wouldn't be seen as fair 'cos, if he wins, they'll say he just made the jury agree with his badass Primá mind whammy thing."

"Dad doesn't want me to be a Lawyer," Castiel explained, relieved he finally understood Meg's issue. "He wants me to study law, not actively practice it."

"Why?" Meg asked, reasonably enough. "Why bother learning it, if you aren't going to use it?"

"I am. Just not in a courtroom. Apparently, after I set up my Pack Hall, he wants me to take over Cain-Crowley as a Managing Partner. I have to be Qualified as a Lawyer to do it, but I don't actually have to _be_ a Lawyer. Like you said, a Beta Court wouldn't let me do it and I don't need any Beta qualifications to practice Pack Law, but I can't run Cain-Crowley if I don't know what I'm doing."

"Does that mean you have study at a Free Beta University?" Meg asked, clearly unhappy at the prospect.

"It would have been the easiest way," Castiel said, "but when my Sire suggested the idea, my BetaMom burst into tears, saying I was still just a tiny pup," he rolled his eyes with fond exasperation, "and then he'd barely managed to calm her down before my OmegáMom said I wasn't supposed to leave the PackLands yet, and he did that Omadonna thing with his eyes and that was game over. So I'm not going anywhere. It's really not fair how Mom wins every single argument with my Dad just by going all super-mystical. Anyway, I'm going to do most of my studying on line, with some of Crowley's Lawyers visiting to help me out, and then I'll just take the actual exams when I move to Detroit."

"Probably just as well," Meg said. "You can learn stuff at your own pace without getting held back by stupid classmates. Besides, you've only just turned fifteen. That's much younger than most Betas who go to college, so you'd feel out of place even if you weren't a Primá." Then a wicked smile crept over her face and she chuckled deeply.

"What now?" Castiel demanded suspiciously.

"I was just thinking about Crowley," she said. There was little love lost between her and the Alpha but, then again, except for Castiel and Benny, Meg didn't seem to think anyone was worth the effort of befriending.

"What about Crowley."

"You and Crowley, you know..." She gave a lewd wink. "If you take over Cain-Crowley, isn't Crowley then going to be one of YOUR Alphas?"

Castiel shuddered. "Ewww. I don't want to think about it. I haven't even presented yet, Meg."

"Won't be long now," she said. "You ought to at least be thinking about it. No point having a dick the size of a baseball bat if you aren't going to use it."

"MEG!" Castiel protested, turning scarlet with embarrassment.

Benny roared with laughter, which he soon regretted when his amusement brought Meg's focus to himself. "So, Alpha boy, aren't you going to give Castiel some helpful pointers about... how do people put it.... ah, I think the word is 'dominating'?"

"It's private stuff," he mumbled, his cheeks flushing.

"Bollocks," Meg stated firmly. "We're all friends here. Friends share 'stuff'. So tell us what it's like. We want to know."

"I don't want to know," Castiel protested.

"'Course you do," Meg said, with a careless shrug. "It's completely fascinating and since the whole point of you dragging my ass to the library with you every darned morning is supposedly about my 'education', you ought to embrace and encourage my sudden newfound scientific curiosity." She smiled smugly.

"It's perfectly possible to explain the mechanics of Primá Domination without embarrassing Benny," Castiel chided. "The act of Domination is simply something done to activate the remaining latent Alpha genes that haven't been woken by testosterone alone."

"Blah, blah, blah, WikkiPup," Meg scoffed. "I know why it's done. I want to know how it _feels_."

"It feels like having a baseball bat rammed inside your ass," Benny snarled. "How the fuck do you _think_ it feels?"

"Ewww," Castiel repeated, his face scrunching with distaste. "You're talking about my DAD!"

"I was actually talking about my ass," Benny pointed out dryly.

Meg stamped her feet with frustration. "I'm not talking about ANYONE'S cock or ass," she yelled. "I want to know how it _feels_."

Understanding dawned on Benny's face and a slow, smile replaced his previous irritation. "Oh, Cher, it feels _wonderful_. I don't think I can explain how..."

"Try," she demanded.

The Alpha laughed gently and nodded his agreement.

"It's hard to explain, because you aren't an Alpha. Being born an Alpha, particularly in Free Beta society is... well, it's hard, you know? You spend years thinking you're going to be a Beta, just being a normal, happy kid. Then you hit puberty and it isn't an instant thing. You don't know straight away. It creeps up on you slowly. As your balls and your voice drop, and hair starts sprouting in places its got no business being, you start getting these weird feelings. And your personality starts to change. It's like you become a whole new, angry, unhappy person. I'm not talking about the 'rage'. That comes later, after presentation, but right from the start of it, when the testosterone starts moving and activating the latent Alpha genes, you start feeling a kind of need building up inside you and its frustrating and irritating and just makes you kind of hate everything because nothing is what you _need_ and you don't even know what it _is_ that you need.

"It's kind of like being a drug addict. You have this constant prickling under your skin. This incessant craving for something.

"I don't think I could have even tried to put it into words before I came here and joined the Pack because I honestly didn't know what it was I was looking for until I actually found it, you know? All I understood before was that I had this emptiness inside me, like a hunger that couldn't be satisfied. After I presented and got hit by the 'rage' I thought I could fill the emptiness with sex or violence and, sure, it helped but it didn't actually satisfy the hunger, it just sated it for a bit and then it would just come back in waves.

"When I finally hit adulthood and the 'rage' left, I was still left with the emptiness inside me. Sure, sex still worked as a distraction. So did a good old fist fight. I could even stave it off a bit by doing things that made me feel good about myself. Like when I stepped in to save Joshua. It felt great. It felt _right_. Even though, a year or so earlier you would have been correct, Meg, to think I was just wanting the same thing. But by the time I met you, I was over the 'rage' and all I really wanted was to stop hurting so much, deep down inside myself and, somehow, helping people, protecting them, really soothed that ache as much as, if not more, than finding an excuse to hurt them.

"I'd decided I was going to enlist, earlier that day, because I thought, maybe, the reason so many Alphas joined up wasn't just because we're big nasty motherfuckers but because we _need_ that feeling we're protecting folk.

"But then I met you, and Joshua, and that made me come here, even though I'd always been told that the Packs killed Free Alphas if they entered their territory."

"All the Packs welcome anyone who wants to join, as long as they're willing to live by Pack Law," Castiel interruped, glowering with outrage at any suggestion otherwise. "And the worst that would happen to an unwelcome visitor would be an escort back out of Pack Lands."

Benny smiled at him. "Well, I know that _now_ ," he agreed. "Obviously, it turned out to be a load of bullshit Free Beta propaganda. But at the time, I was pretty sure I was a dead-man walking. I was just kind of hoping that the Pack would be so pleased to get Joshua that they might let me off with just an ass-kicking. I never expected to be welcomed like I was some long lost pup who'd found his way home.

"And, truly, that was exactly how it felt, coming here. Like I'd come home.

"It wasn't just how surprisingly kind and welcoming everyone was, though that was a big part of it. I hadn't felt that kind of welcome since the day I presented. It was more than that, though. It was bone-deep. A feeling that everything was suddenly all right and, for the first time in years, that emptiness almost disappeared. Not completely, not then, but enough that the feeling of ravenous hunger turned into nothing more than a vague peckishness."

"Dad's pheremones," Castiel said, with a knowing nod. "You were immediately affected at a cellular level by the pheremones he emits. The whole Pack Hall is probably infused with them."

Benny nodded his agreement. "Again, I didn't actually know what it was at the time. But walking in here was like coming out of a winter storm, walking through a door and being hit with the warmth of summer. It was that quick. That perfect."

"But what about the other part," Meg insisted impatiently.

"Well, I only agreed so I could stay, obviously," Benny admitted. "I didn't know much Pack Law, but I knew that much. If I wanted to stay in a Pack, I'd have to bend over for the Primá. I didn't imagine 'enjoying' the experience but it was a cost I knew I was willling to pay within minutes of arriving. I figured what did a bit of pain and humiliation matter, really. Better that than returning to the Free Betas."

"That's not..." Castiel began, hotly.

Benny raised his hand in a peace gesture. "Of course it's not," he agreed. "I'm only saying that's what I was thinking when I agreed to it. I thought Cain was just going to show me my place, put me on my knees literally and, at the time, I figured it wasn't too high a price to pay. I had no idea, at all, what it was really all about. It's not like Alpha physiology is covered in Beta School's biology classes. I had no idea that Alphas have a duel presentation process and that it takes a Primá to activate the second part."

"Well, any violent stimulation of an Alpha's prostrate would cause the same hormonal response," Castiel interrupted thoughtfully, ever the scholar. "Being penetrated by another Alpha might do it. But I don't suppose that would be likely to happen. I've never heard of two Alphas mating each other."

"Would that be allowed?" Meg asked, curiously.

Castiel shrugged. "Why not? But it's unlikely to come up. Alphas are too naturally competetive with each other. Any attempt to have a relationship would turn into a constant battle for dominance. At least between an Alpha and a Primá there's no battle to be had. It's cut and dried which one is going to be top dog."

"Says the Primá," Meg replied, rolling her eyes, but she nodded her understanding of his point.

Benny shook his head in negation. "It's not just that," he argued. "I don't think there's any situation in which I could have taken an Alpha's cock inside me. Alphas are too damned big. Male Betas with Alpha husbands have to practice with pegs for months before the Alphas even attempt penetration."

"But Primáres are even bigger," Meg argued.

"Which is where the pheremones work," Castiel explained. "After an Alpha willingly submits verbally and ONLY after that submission is freely given, a Primá emits a cloud of pheremones and the Alpha just... well... fully relaxes, I guess."

Benny nodded his agreement. "It's just like suddenly what seemed impossible becomes the easiest thing in the world."

"So it doesn't hurt?"

"Not at all. Well, not at the time. It feels great. It's only the next day that you wake up feeling like you've been split in two by a log. It hurts like fuck _then_." Benny shrugs. "But you don't care because it was _your_ Primá who did it."

Meg frowned suspiciously.

"That's the second part of the presentation," Castiel explained. "After the stimulation of the prostrate, certain hormones are released to allow the last genetic building blocks to fall into place. As soon as that happens, the Alpha switches 'on'. He instantly develops an unswerving loyalty to the Primá who mounted him and the only way that ever gets broken is if _another_ Primá mounts the Alpha and overwrites the compulsion with a new one. It's almost as though an Alpha has this inbuilt data centre that _needs_ someone to write commands on it."

"So it's just a different kind of Primá mind whammy?" Meg asked, still frowning.

Benny shook his head thoughtfully. "No. It's completely different. It doesn't make me obey Cain. It doesn't even necessarily make me like him. I still have the ability to make all my own decisions and I can argue with him if I disagree with something he does and says. Its different and deeper than any mind control. I just suddenly have a deep, absolute knowledge that _this_ pack is my home. Cain's Pack is the family I was born to protect. This is absolutely, completely, where I belong. Inside Cain's pack. And that emptiness, that hunger, has gone. Completely."

Meg looked vastly relieved as she finally understood what had been bothering her. "I just worried you were, well, being 'influenced'," she admitted quietly.

"I can honestly say, I've never felt so free of influence in my life," he replied. "I've spent years being driven crazy by my hormones and believing there was something wrong with me, only to realise that Alphas just can't live outside of Packs, Meg. Not without going kind of insane. A so-called Free Alpha isn't even really a true Alpha. We're just half-Alpha, without any ability to ever become whole."

"But this loyalty of yours can be moved to another Pack?" Meg demanded.

"Only if I agree to submit to a different Primá," Benny assured her, misunderstanding the reason for her question. "It can't happen against my will."

"Good," she said, "Glad to hear it. That'll work out fine, then."

"What will work out fine?" Benny asked.

Meg rolled her eyes. "When CP and me go to Detroit," she clarified. "You'll be able to come with us if that's all it takes. CP just has to fuck you when we're ready to go and then we can stay togther forever. That's great."

Benny chuckled at the look of sudden alarm on Castiel's face.

He patted the young Primá on the shoulder and offered him a broad, shark-toothed grin.

"Don't look so scared, pup. I don't bite... much."


	24. Chapter Twenty One

Dean was thrilled to receive his acceptance letter to Lawrence Junior High. It wouldn’t have been a big deal except that it meant he was jumping from fourth grade to sixth. The letter was a testament to the hard work he’d done and although he knew he wasn’t clever like his younger brother, Sammy, he was glad he could prove he wasn’t exactly stupid either.

Sadly, Sam didn’t share his excitement. He glared at the letter as though it was a personal betrayal.

“What about me?” he demanded. “If you go to this stupid school, I’ll be stuck in fifth grade on my own.”

Guilt instantly dampened Dean’s excitement. Sam was right to be upset at the idea. The two brothers had always shared classes and Dean’s popularity with the other pupils had always formed a protective barrier for the younger, less popular, sibling.

Dean floundered a moment, wrong-footed, then a solution suddenly occurred to him. “You’re really smart, Sammy. I bet you could jump a grade too. You could come with me.” He grinned happily at the prospect.

Sam glowered. "I don't want to go to a new school."

"Well you don't have to, yet," Dean pointed out reasonably. "You don’t have to move up a grade. You can do fifth grade as normal, and change schools next year. You don't have to come with me."

Sam pondered this, chewing on his lower lip, then shook his head and said, "But I want to go to school with you."

Dean shrugged helplessly. "Then you'll have to change schools."

"Or you could stay with me and we could do fifth grade together,” Sam suggested slyly, his big dark eyes as wide and irresistible as a puppy’s.

Dean sighed. "Moving to Junior High this year, and jumping to sixth grade, means I’m finally going to have the chance to make friends my own age. “

“But who’s going to be friends with me?”

“All our friends will still be in fifth grade with you.”

"They're not our friends. They’re your friends. If you leave they won't be friends with me,” Sam pouted.

Knowing Sam was probably right, Dean didn't argue the point. "So come to the new school with me and we'll both make new friends together."

"They'll only pretend to be my friends so they can be friends with you," Sam sulked, his eyes filling with tears.

Looking at his little brother’s sad face, Dean’s excitement was crushed. He swallowed his disappointment, crumpling the letter in his fist, glad now the post had arrived after his mother had already left for work. He wasn't sure she'd approve of his sudden decision but what she didn't know wouldn't hurt her.

“It’s okay, Sammy,” he said. “We can do fifth grade together. I didn't want to go to the stupid new school yet anyway."

And, seeing Sam's beaming happy smile as he watched Dean throw the letter in the trash, Dean knew he'd made the right choice.

~

Life in Lawrence ticked on for the next year, predictable in its sameness. Dean and Sam attended school together, Dean remained popular with pupils and teachers alike despite his propensity to 'win' himself detention at least twice a week for one minor reason or another.

Dean wasn't a deliberate troublemaker. He always did his homework. He never skipped classes. He was never rude or disrespectful to his teachers. But he was often restless and bored. He hated sitting inside a dusty classroom when the sun was shining through the high windows, beckoning him to race outside and play. He thrummed with energy, sometimes feeling like he might explode with his pent-up desire to move.

Mary often said he reminded her of a spirited racehorse, fighting its rider out of excitement rather than defiance, too eager to run to wait patiently for the starter pistol to go off.

It confused her, in all honesty.

Although information on the Omegá designation was sparse in their Free Beta society, most of it alluding either to their 'holy' status or their biological 'needs', Mary had spent enough time researching that she had thought she had at least a fair idea of how a typical Omegá looked and behaved both before and after presentation. Obviously not all soft spoken, gentle, delicate Beta boys presented as Omegá but _all_ Omegáres, apparently, definitely appeared to be soft spoken, gentle, delicate Beta boys _before_ presentation.

Not so her son Dean.

Loud, boisterous, Dean who was tall, strong and irrepressibly 'male'.

Dean confounded her so much that she often found herself second-guessing her assumptions. What if he wasn't an Omegá? What if he was just a Beta with a faulty pituitary gland causing his micropenis? What if she'd let the combination of green eyes and a hormonal abnormality and gut instinct lead her to a totally fallacious conclusion? What if what she _knew_ was wrong?

She wished she had someone to discuss it with, that she could safely talk to doctors and ask for their opinions with, but she was too afraid to even risk posting anonymously on online forums in case someone somehow traced her identity. If Dean _was_ an Omegá, she couldn't risk doing or saying anything that might betray his designation.

It would be impossible to know for sure before he actually presented, though she believed the way he entered puberty would be enough to confirm her suspicions one way or the other. Of course, there was no fixed scientific formula to predict when a boy would enter puberty. It could happen anytime between ten and fourteen, so Mary still had a nail-biting few years ahead of her.

Puberty created far more visibly obvious signs in a boy than in a girl or an Omegá. Boy pups, whether Beta or Alpha, evidenced major physiological changes even before the presentation that clearly marked them as biologically 'male'. Female Betas didn't 'present' at all, they just gradually blossomed into womanhood and Omegáres followed that same process except for the abrupt additional biological changes caused by the process of their actual presentation. As long as an Omegá wasn't identified and docked too early (and the very thought of _that_ practice made Mary tremble with outrage) their tiny testes would produce enough testosterone for their voices to drop an octave or two but their bodies would remain androgynous. And, of course, Omegáres didn't grow either facial or pubic hair.

~

Unlike Dean, who had so far shown no physical or emotional changes to evidence he was rapidly approaching his teens, ten year old Sam was already displaying the first signs of early pubescence. Sam had always been a little spoiled by his older brother's attention and had sometimes taken advantage of Dean's good nature but he'd done so with quiet sulks, pouts or the application of artfully presented puppy eyes.

But at ten, Sam began to find his voice and sometimes it wasn't a pleasant one. Whilst, overall he remained a quiet, good-natured pup, his occasional flashes of temper were evidenced by snapping criticisms or whining protestations that his life just wasn't 'fair'.

Sam was right, Dean decided.

It just wasn't fair, he thought, how just about everyone liked _him_ more. He knew his brother could be a bit sulky but Sammy's disgruntled attitude was frequently justified.

Their Grandsire was a case in point. For some reason that totally escaped Dean's understanding, Samuel Campbell barely tolerated his namesake but thought the sun shone out of Dean. It didn't even make any sense. Dean had never once attended any of his 'Pops' sermons because the idea of sitting still and behaving himself for two minutes, let alone two hours, felt like a physical impossibility to him. Sam, who had no problem behaving with quiet decorum, often went to Alfarsday services (something that Mary was singularly unimpressed with but didn't actually forbid) in an attempt to win Pops favour but, somehow, it failed to impress. Weirdly, Pops seemed to think Dean's defiant refusal to attend was more 'natural' for boys their age.

What made it worse was that Sam disliked their Sire almost as much as Pops did and that still didn't win him any popularity points with their Grandsire.

Sam was glad John Winchester rarely visited them. Dean didn't think the opinion had anything to do with Sam attending his Pops church (though the crap his Pops spouted about Alphas like his Sire was another good reason Dean refused to go). Sam just didn't seem to understand that John's work was really important. Dean knew his Sire was like all the heroes in his comics and favourite TV shows. He was out there catching the bad guys and keeping people safe. That was something Dean was proud of.

On the rare occasions John returned to Lawrence, Dean drank in his Sire's tale of heroic successes like a starving man at a banquet. He trailed his father around the house like a shadow, his face bright with excited pleasure as John regaled him with his stories and confirmed the validity of his hero worship.

Sam spent most of John's short visits complaining that his Sire was away from home too much and had missed his birthday, the school play or whatever other perceived slight he could name.

Dean, like Mary, instinctively knew that the more unpleasantness John faced on his visits, the less often he would come. So they both made the effort not to give him a hard time.

Sam never seemed to get that memo.

But Dean never got mad with his brother, even when John always, inevitably, got tired of the whining, packed his bags and left again. Dean understood that Sammy was just really sad not to have a normal family. He didn't want to be the son of a 'hero'. He definitely didn't want to be the son of an Alpha. Sam thought it was John's fault he didn't have any friends and although Dean could have pointed out that having an Alpha Sire wasn't stopping _him_ from being popular, Dean didn't want to hurt Sammy's feelings.

~

At eleven, Dean had begun to worry about his body because although he was too young to care about his sexuality it was pretty obvious to him that his penis was abnormally small. Yet, although he was beginning to suspect there was something 'wrong' with him, he never linked that concern with his designation. It genuinely never even entered his mind he might be anything except a Beta.

His Sire was an Alpha and everyone knew Alphas only sired Beta pups. To be perfectly honest, that certainty was somewhat of a disappointment to Dean because he would have given anything to be more like his father. He had decided he wanted to grow up to be a hunter too.

John was thrilled by his oldest pup's desire to emulate him and assured Dean there were lots of Betas in the profession. John said he couldn’t see any reason why his strapping young pup couldn’t grow up to join him and make it a ‘family business.’

Dean was over the moon and spent most of his free time encouraging his friends to play 'hunter and fugitive' with him in the woods around their house.

Mary, who was already less than happy with her husband's consistent absences, was furious with John for encouraging Dean's ambition to become a Bounty Hunter. It had nothing to do with Dean's (probable) designation. It was simply the horror any mother would feel at the idea of one of her pups entering such a dangerous occupation.

Neither of her sons was ever going to follow in her mate's footsteps if she could prevent it, she told herself.

Then, because Mary was prone to introspection, she double checked her response wasn't related to Dean (probably) being an Omegá. She felt it would be as much an example of bigotry as any she had ever railed against if it was _that_ she had an issue with.

Dean was a big, strong, healthy pup. There was nothing even vaguely effeminate in his physicality or nature. There was absolutely no reason he wouldn't remain that way even when (if) he presented as an Omegá. Even if presentation reduced his ability to develop further muscle, he would retain his current frame and still gain full height and _some_ more muscle. And, unless Omegá presentation involved an actual personality transplant, there was absolutely no way Dean was ever going to become an example of what Beta society purported Omegáres to be.

Sure, it 'could' be John's genes that made the difference, but Mary suspected it was far more a result of nurture than nature. Mary had no doubt whatsoever that even if Dean’s father had been a Beta she would have raised him to be a ’normal’ pup. A Beta father could still have provided Dean with the genetics to grow similarly big and strong.

With that realisation, she was struck by a truth so damned obvious that she couldn't believe she'd never understood it before, that it might be DEAN who was the anomaly but it was all the other Omegáres who were 'wrong'.

Omegáres weren’t only treated appallingly by the Free Beta society, being seen as little more than sexual pacifiers for Alphas until they could be sold off as Brood Mares for Primáres. Omegáres were deliberately being socially engineered to be unable to escape their destiny.

Mary realised there was no way _any_ mother wouldn't know their pup was almost certainly going to become an Omegá from the moment it was whelped. Even the most fundamental Ablest Beta bitch would be thrilled by the idea of birthing such a rare and valuable creature. Mary was sure that whilst such an evil woman might drown an Alpha pup were its probable designation evident at birth, whelping an Omegá was probably like winning the lottery for an Ablest Beta.

All they had to do was raise the pup for maybe fourteen years, cosseting him like a prize cow, then sell him for a lot of money. She doubted those little pups were raised to be rough and tumble, confident, independent boys like Dean. If you were monstrous enough to ’sell’ your own pup, then you were hardly going to encourage that pup to develop the ability to protest the sale.

Sure Dean had the genetic input of an Alpha's physicality to explain a lot of his growth but there were a lot of physically big Betas too.It could only be a deliberate genteel upbringing that prevented Omegáres developing a far more ’normal’ physiology. Maybe the Free Betas were deliberately raising their Omegá pups to be meek, obedient and physically weak. She doubted the same was true in the Packs but, then again, she doubted many ever were Pack born these days anyway. And, even if they were, those Omegáres didn’t have mothers who deliberately brought them up to behave so Alpha-like.

She supposed it could be argued she'd done Dean a disservice by _not_ preparing him to submit to the degradations Free Beta society imposed on Omegáres but she had no regrets.

If it proved impossible to maintain the illusion Dean was a Beta, Mary would flee with him to one of the Packs. That might not be a perfect solution but it had to be better than the alternative.

Mary might never have actually seen it with her own eyes but she had researched enough to know exactly what happened to Omegáres in the big cities and just the thought of it made her want to be physically sick.

 _Her_ pup would never be mutilated by 'docking'. He'd never suffer the indignity of being paraded half naked in Omegá pants or be forced to use Omega 'seating' or be spanked to make him docile and sexually receptive, or be raped 'for his own good' by Alpha teenagers under the sick guidance of a Beta Council appointed 'guardian'.

The only way any of that would happen would be over her own dead body, she swore to herself.

~

Dean's decision to enact plan "Get people to like Sammy better" was born during the summer holidays.

Dean blamed himself for Sam's lack of popularity. Sure, Sam was quiet and bookish (and sometimes a bit of a bitch) but Dean suspected that would be less of an issue if people weren't forever comparIng Sam's personality to his own more exuberant one.

When they both moved up to Junior High together, he decided to make a real effort in the new school to keep himself more in the background and give Sam an opportunity to shine.

When school started in Lunasnueve, and the two pups arrived for their first day, it wasn't initially difficult for Dean to pretend to be as shy as Sam. He was completely overwhelmed by the size of the Junior High and the sheer number of unfamiliar faces.

  
Struck silent by the alien environment, it was easy to stay quiet during the morning classes as he tried to size things up and the fact he'd just jumped a grade helped him to concentrate because he actually had to pay attention.

Dean sat quietly during recess, resisting the urge to push his way into a group of pups playing ball. Instead, staying back to allow Sam to make the first move, he waited, a little impatiently, his feet itching with the urge to move, until break was over and still Sam just sat there.

At lunch, Dean struggled to sit quietly as Sam choose to read a book. He wanted to get up and play but didn't want to be the first of them to socialise, so he just sat there, vibrating with pent up energy.

Finally, irritated beyond patience by Dean's restless shuffling, Sam looked up, stared at him thoughtfully, then said, "Will you just GO already!"

"Huh?" Dean gulped, guiltily.

Sam made shooing gestures. "Go. Scram. Vamoose. Play ball. Pull pigtails. Punch the other pups for dissing me. Be Dean."

"But I wanted...." Dean's voice trailed off and he bit his lip.

Sam offered him a genuine smile. "Dean, you're my brother. Just 'cos I bitch that people don't like me, doesn't mean I don't want them to like YOU."

And that, Dean decided, as he heaved a vast sigh of relief, rose to his feet and raced off to find himself some new friends, was the reason he loved Sam so much.

Under all the bitching and sulking, Sammy _was_ a really sweet pup.


	25. Chapter Twenty Two

Joshua was a perfect little bitch.

Usually, Chuck liked that in an Omegá.

Today, not so much.

“No,” he said firmly.

Confident Joshua, who was stood there naked as a jay bird, so proud of his physical appearance that he refused to even adorn himself with jewels because 'perfection could not be improved upon' tossed his head prettily, stamped his foot and pouted, a cute tiny V forming between his eyebrows.

“Why not?” he demanded petulantly. “You said it was my choice. Well, I’ve made my choice.”

He really was the cutest thing, Chuck thought. It was such a refreshing change to deal with an Omegá who had barely been affected by his Beta heritage. Because of Joshua's own courage in running from his Beta family before his presentation, and Meg and Benny's successful defence of him when he'd been attacked by the teen Alpha, Joshua was, officially, the only known Omegá currently in the US who was both virgin and undocked. That gave the beautiful young pup a considerable amount of power and Chuck was proud he was using it.

Even so...

"Make another choice," Chuck told him, not unkindly. "Castiel is not an option."

"Why not?" This time the demand was from Chuck's youngest pup, who was also quite magnificently beautiful as he stood there filled with angry, disappointed confusion.

Chuck smiled gently at him. "Joshua is not _your_ Omegá, Castiel. You think you want to take him as your bride, but you don't really. What you think is love is just lust mixed with the satisfaction you feel at knowing Joshua chose you rather than your brothers. That heat you feel in your veins is triumph, not love. It's a fleeting, ephemeral feeling that will swiftly fade."

A myriad of emotions flashed through his pup's expressive blue eyes. Hot anger, vehement denial, contemplation, comprehension, doubt and finally, reluctantly, a bitter acceptance of truth.

Chuck turned his attention to Joshua next. "As for you, pup, you haven't chosen Castiel out of love, either. You've just looked at my three still eligible sons and decided you'd take the prettiest one for yourself. The one who's just inherited the largest Pack Lands. The one as young as you, so you imagine he'll be easier for you to manipulate."

Chuck raised a hand to hush Joshua's protest at such harsh judgement.

"Don't deny it, Joshua. Those were good reasons for your choice. Smart reasons. I'm not criticising or condemning you for them. I'm actually rather proud of you. But it will not happen. Choose again. If Jophiel or Zuriel are not to your liking, I will tell Cain to send invitations to the lesser packs until we find a mate you approve of, but your mate will not be Castiel."

"You told me it was my right to decide," Joshua protested sulkily.

Chuck grinned wryly. "You only have the right to say who you wish to mate, not the right to make it happen. The only **absolute** right we Omegáres possess, the only word we can say that none can deny; that word is not 'yes', Joshua. The one word an Omegá may say with absolute certainty it will be upheld by all who honor Pack Law is 'No'.

"And so, that is what I say to both of you now. **No.** It will not happen. It is not written. It will not be so."

Chuck felt the power of the Omadonna rising inside him, a surge of phosphorus essence to punctuate his words with a divine exclamation mark. But he pushed it down, banked the fire of his conviction, spoke to the pups with only the authority of his position as Pack Omegá and mother. He wanted simple reason to prevail here, not religious obeisance.

Teen infatuations could turn on a dime, enflamed by one wind, dampened by another. Joshua ran hot and cold, twisting and turning in his passions, revelling in his potency as a young, beautiful Omegá. Playing one suitor off against another in a game of dominance. Flexing and honing his ability to influence and control.

Watching Joshua evolve from a frightened child into the mercurial, magnificent creature he was becoming filled Chuck with a renewed hope for the future. He fully understood why even a pup as usually sensible as Castiel had found himself briefly entangled in the young Omegá's enchanting web.

But although, sometimes, Chuck's' vision of what was to come was hazy, parts of it opaque or blurred, other parts were absolutes. Fixed points in time. There were some things that could not be prevented. Others that must not be prevented. Some things that could not be allowed to happen.

Besides, his mother's instinct was enough in this case to know that Joshua had not captured Castiel's heart, he'd merely stroked the pup's ego and, fortunately, Castiel was sensible enough to accept truth when slapped across the head by it.

Castiel turned to Joshua and offered him a sad apologetic shrug. Then he nodded to his beloved Omegá Mother in acquiescence of his wishes and turned to leave, his head bowed and shoulders drooping with disappointment.

When he was at the door, about to leave, Chuck called after him quietly, "Pup."

Castiel paused and looked back.

Chuck offered him a wise, gentle smile.

"If this truly were _your_ Omegá, you would not leave."

Castiel flinched slightly but his eyes flickered with renewed understanding. He dipped his head in a nod of acknowledgement of Chuck's words and left the room silently, letting the door close softly behind him.

Chuck turned his attention to Joshua who, it must be said, wasn't looking particularly heartbroken. "Let's look at your options. Raziel is Cain's nephew and has a pack hall in California. You'd probably enjoy the weather. Hot enough there you'd never have to wear clothes. Or there's Javan, he's a nice boy. Recently formed a pack in Denver. Good looking Primá if you want that sort of thing, which I suppose you do if you like Castiel..."

~

"So?" Meg said, raising an eyebrow in query as Castiel stomped into his outer bed chamber with the demeanour of a kicked puppy.

"Mom said no," Castiel huffed, dropping into the seat next to hers and glowering at the unfairness of the world.

"Good," Meg said unsympathetically, nodding her approval of Chuck's decision. "It was a stupid idea. You're far too young."

"I'm eighteen . I am now officially the Grandé Alpha Primá of the Midwestern States. I'm going to Detroit in three weeks to establish my Pack Hall. I'm old enough to mate," Castiel argued.

"Legally, maybe," Meg replied. "Emotionally, not so much. Maturity isn't measured in years."

Castiel opened his mouth to reply, then closed it again and instead just nodded, glumly.

Meg did an exaggerated double-take. "You aren't going to argue the point?"

Castiel shook his head. "No. You're right. So's my mom. Something he said reminded me of a promise I made to myself once. A promise I was just about to break. So you're right. It wasn't a mature decision."

"Well, it wasn't a 'stupid' one either. That was too harsh," Meg allowed, feeling magnanimous now that she had won the argument. "Joshua is easy on the eyes and given the way he prances around flashing his flower in everyone's faces, I imagine he's going to be one hell of a good fuck. If you're going to mate the wrong Omegá, you might as well at least enjoy the sex."

"MEG! You can't talk about an Omegá like that. They're holy."

She grinned unrepentantly. "There's nothing unholy about sex as you are going to find out for yourself very soon."

"I doubt it," Castiel grumbled. "'Mom said 'no' to Joshua and only the All-Father knows when another Omegá will be available and even then they might not choose me."

"I wasn't talking about Omegáres. I've been sitting here trying to work out exactly how many Alphas work in Cain-Crowley. I've only gotten as far as the Torte Law division and it already looks like your calendar is going to be full for the next three months," she snickered.

Meg had taken over as the project manager for their impending relocation. Despite her lack of formal education Meg had a undeniable knack for organisation. Benny just called it inherent 'bossiness'.

"How many times do I have to tell you? It's not about sex," Castiel argued. "It's just the formal process of transferring loyalty to a new Pack leader."

Meg sneered. "It involves the insertion of your cock into their asses. That's sex, CP. Speaking of which, when are you going to 'do the do' with Benny?"

"There are formalities. Benny has to ask for permission to leave this pack. Then he has to offer his loyalty to me. Then I have to ask dad if he has any objections. Then I have to give permission for Benny to make the offer. Then Benny has to swear his allegiance verbally. "

"And then you do the do."

"But it's just the final part of a long, boring process."

"So where are you currently in the 'process'?"

Castiel mumbled something unintelligible

"What's that, CP? Didn't quite catch that."

Castiel glared at her, his blue eyes sparking with faint flashes of a less natural azure. "I hate you," he mumbled.

"Hate who?" Benny asked as he entered the room to join them.

Meg grinned like a satisfied cat. "You're late, but still, somehow, just perfectly in time. CP was about to tell me when the pair of you are finally going to do the do. We're running out of time, boys. Snap. Snap. What's the holdup?"

Benny shrugged. "It's not on my side. I formally swore allegiance two days ago but Castiel's been... preoccupied. How did it go, boss?" Benny had been calling Castiel 'boss' in gentle mockery since the day Meg had first put forward the idea of his joining Castiel's Pack.

Before Castiel could answer, Meg cut in.

"Wedding's off. Chuck said no. CP has seen the light. Joshua is free to break more Primá hearts. Moving on, let's talk about you two," she said, airily.

"I'm sorry," Benny told Castiel. He examined his friend's face closely for a moment then, seemingly satisfied that Castiel truly wasn't genuinely upset, nodded and said no more about Joshua.

Meg snapped her fingers. "Come on," she insisted. "Time to get naked, boys. Don't be shy. I've been waiting YEARS for this," and she licked her lips lasciviously.

"MEG!," Castiel barked in horrified shock.

Benny chuckled deeply. "You want to watch, Cher?"

Meg rolled her eyes. "Of course I want to watch. I've been waiting three goddamned years to watch."

"It's a private matter," Castiel insisted, scarlet with embarrassment.

"Never used to be," Meg pointed out reasonably. "Always used to happen in the middle of a Pack Hall so the entire pack could witness. It's traditional. I thought Cain and Chuck brought you up to honor tradition."

"I am NOT dropping my pants in the Pack Hall!" Castiel insisted.

"Course you're not," Meg agreed. "It's not _your_ Pack Hall and Benny can't even go to _your_ Pack Hall if you haven't done the do already, so this is the compromise. You do it here, I witness it as your pack member and tradition is satisfied."

She grinned with smug satisfaction.

"Fine by me," Benny announced easily.

"Of course it's fine by you," Castiel muttered. "I imagine the sight of your naked cock is already indelibly etched on her eyeballs."

"It's very pretty," Meg agreed, "and very big. Can't blame a girl for taking a ride on it now and then."

"Now and then?" Castiel mocked. "I have a standing order that housekeeping have to change my sheets daily. I got sick and tired of the number of times I came home from studying and found my bed looking like a hurricane had hit it."

"It's a big bed," Benny agreed unapologetically. "Shame to waste it."

Meg offered an exaggerated pout. "I've got to practice, CP. You ought to appreciate the amount of effort I put into preparing my cunt just in case you ever get your head out of your ass and ask me to be your Beta Wife."

Then she grinned wickedly as though it had been a joke.

Her smirk would have fooled anyone. But Castiel and Benny weren't 'anyone'. They were her two closest, perhaps only, friends. Both saw beneath her confident facade to the defiant little street rat whose harsh tongue and fierce smirks were just armour between a cruel world and her own surprising vulnerability.

Benny's heart filled with soft pity and he exhaled a breath of sorrowed understanding.

Castiel was stunned by a much deeper emotional response.

He had already accepted his Omegá Mother's judgement on an intellectual level but now he felt it thrumming inside him like a percussion instrument, flooding his whole being with complete, blinding understanding.

He knew, suddenly, absolutely, that if he were to return to Chuck's chambers and receive a 'No' to the suggestion of mating Meg, he would **not** accept it. He would beg and plead and rant and rage until his mother acceded to his demand.

Because he loved Meg. Loved her the way he had always known that he should love his Beta Wife. The way he should love his Omegá.

Chuck was right. Joshua was _not_ his Omegá or he would have fought for him the way he now realised he would fight for Meg.

And because he loved Meg and knew Meg and understood exactly what her fierce soul and fragile heart needed him to say, he didn't dishonour her with trite flowery bullshit or rote words of romance.

"I didn't think I had to 'ask'," Castiel said, with a deliberately careless shrug. "I assumed it was taken as read. Why the hell else would I let your skank ass ride my Alpha in _my_ bed?"

Tears sprang into Meg's eyes as she fought desperately for composure but, of course, as always, she won the battle and replaced the visible shock and thrill of Castiel's unexpected capitulation with a more familiar smirk.

"He's not your Alpha, yet," she said, leering suggestively.

Castiel swallowed heavily, then firmed his resolve.

"Then I guess it's time to 'do the do'," he agreed.

~

Meg had never actually seen a naked Alpha Primá, though she had often imagined what one might look like.

She knew their knots only formed within the depths of an Omegá so would not be visible to the eye. She knew they were supposedly far better endowed than Alphas but having seen and experienced Benny's cock it had been hard to imagine anyone being even larger. She had even sometimes, on reflection, wondered if it might not actually look ridiculously out of proportion for genitals so reputedly huge to be on the far leaner frame of a Primá's body.

Benny was tall and wide and dense with muscle. His neck was thick, his biceps had the same circumference as most Betas' thighs, his erect cock thrust a proud ten inches from his groin and was so wide and heavy she always needed two hands to hold it. It had taken months for her to manage to take more than an inch of its fat length into her mouth without gagging, but it was in such perfect proportion to his body that Meg would always see Beta men to be woefully under-endowed in comparison.

As Benny swiftly undressed himself with quiet efficiency and stood naked and unashamed before them, Meg wriggled a little with both excitement and the hot thrill of remembered pleasure. She felt too hot and restricted in her own clothes as wet heat surged between her thighs and caused her panties to fell damp and uncomfortable.

She hesitated a moment, then shucked off her dress, unhooked her bra and wriggled out of her panties until she too was naked.

Castiel made a choking noise deep in his throat. "I thought...ah... I, um, thought you were...ah...just watching."

Meg smirked and deliberately straightened her spine to further emphasise the pertness of her tits, since both men seemed to be enjoying the view. "I see with my eyes, not my clothes," she pointed out.

Now that Castiel was the only one still dressed, it felt to him like it would be more embarrassing to stay that way than to strip. He suspected that was the real reason Meg had done it. To make him more comfortable. That was classic Meg, only able to do something nice if she could do so whilst pretending to be oblivious.

Castiel slowly removed his shirt, revealing a lean, toned muscular chest, clearly defined abdomen and deep, distinct inguinal creases plunging like arrows towards his groin.

Meg licked her lips approvingly. Though he was shorter and slighter than Benny, the sleek lines of his body were just a different kind of a similar perfection. Benny had the sturdy, magnificent power of a warhorse. Castiel the speed and strength of a thoroughbred racer.

They were, she decided, just two perfect examples of two totally different breeds.

Castiel fumbled a little as he attempted to unfasten his pants, nervous excitement causing his fingers to feel fat and clumsy.

"Let me," Benny said softly, stepping forwards and sinking with surprising elegance to his knees so his head was level with Castiel's groin. He reached out and confidently unfastened Castiel's pants, then eased them down his hips, along with his boxers, and let them fall to the floor.

"Fucking hell," Meg gasped, as she saw a Primá cock for the first time. "Where the hell do you keep that thing? NO, seriously, CP, how the heck do you wear pants at all?"

"Well now you know why Primáres all dress in tailored suits," Castiel laughed, blushing furiously but eyes bright with humour. "A good tailor and well-cut pants hide a multitude of sins."

From his eye-level position, Benny dryly said, "That's definitely one heck of a multitudinous sin, boss."

"It's not going to fit," Meg exclaimed, not necessarily referring to Benny's ass.

Castiel's cock was, she decided, something so alien and magnificent that it deserved a poem to be written about it.

"It needs a name," she said, thoughtfully.

'Cock' just didn't do it justice. There had to be a word bigger than that for an appendage that hung almost to Castiel's knees and was as thick as her forearm. Unlike a 'cock' it was ridged with deep grooves. It would be a physical impossibility for any human (except presumably an Omegá) to absorb more than perhaps half of its length, but the thought of taking even a portion of its vast, ridged width inside her made her wince and yet simultaneously she could actually feel the juices gathering inside her cunt in eager, greedy anticipation.

"Name? It needs its own damned zip-code," Benny grumbled.

There was a moment of stunned silence, then all three friends burst into laughter.

After that, it was easy.

Messy, a bit physically improbable and as clumsy as all first sexual encounters tend to be, but easy because there was friendship and love and humor between them to lubricate the awkwardness. And actual lubricant, obviously, that Castiel said wasn't necessary according to his Dad, to which Benny replied that that explained why it had hurt so goddamned much the day after Cain had fucked him. Meg had taken his side and had insisted they did use it as long as she was allowed to apply it.

And, of course, Castiel's pheromones helped.

Despite the trust and love shared between the three friends, when it came to the moment of truth and Benny knelt on the bed, thrusting his ass in invitation, his buttocks were clenched so tightly in terror that Meg doubted she would even manage to ease her smallest finger inside him, let alone any of the lubricant.

"You need to relax," she scolded. "I can't help if you don't let me in."

"I can't relax," Benny snarled.

"Here," Castiel interrupted. "Let me do something."

He leaned forward and pressed his lips against Benny's ass, then pursed them into a kiss and blew softly into the centre of his anus.

Benny exhaled a huge sigh as his whole body relaxed from tense rigidity to a ragdoll compliance and his anus visibly began to open to reveal a wide, inviting portal into his body. Castiel blew again into the opened flesh and it dilated further, until it was so open that Meg coated her whole right hand and, with barely any resistance, managed to push wrist-deep inside Benny to coat his inner passage with thick, lubricating gel.

Benny grunted and groaned with pleasure, pushing his buttocks up eagerly for more sensation, clearly so drunk on Castiel's pheromones that he was now desperate for the penetration that had terrified him just minutes earlier.

"Wow," Meg said, as she withdrew her hand and pulled back to let Castiel position himself behind Benny. "When we finally do the do, I hope that will work on my cunt."

Castiel spared her a quick grin. "Of course, but when we're married you can't ask Benny to apply the lube."

~

"I'm going to let Benny stay here with me for a couple of days," Castiel said quietly, afterwards. "I remember what he said about the last time he pledged allegiance . I don't want him to wake up in pain. If he remains in my close vicinity, my pheromones should soothe any discomfort."

"Good plan," Meg agreed, "but one of us needs to get some work done or we won't be going anywhere. So I'll leave you both to it and get on with ordering the supplies for your...Our...Pack Hall." She paused, hesitated a moment and then, in a surprisingly quiet voice she whispered, "Did you really mean it?"

"I meant it," Castiel assured her.

Her brief look of worry was instantly replaced by a smug grin.

"I knew it," she said, tossing her head and gesturing at her own body jauntily. "How could anyone resist THIS!"

Then, even as Castiel chuckled, another brief look of uncertainty flickered over her face.

"What if Chuck says no?"

"He won't."

"But what if he does?"

"I'll tell him my choice of Beta Wife is my own goddamned business," Castiel insisted.

"Does this mean I need to be all respectable, like Colette? 'Cos that is one real scary ass bitch, Castiel. Gotta tell you. I know she's your mom and all but just one look from her and I'm all sit up straight at the table and don't speak with my mouth full and all that shit... SHIT! I need to stop all this goddamned swearing don't I? I don't think Colette swears. Ever. Fuck me. What am I going to do?"

Castiel smiled. "Don't change, Meg. Don't ever change."

~

As Meg slipped from Castiel's rooms and closed the door behind her, she yelped with shock.

Colette was standing in the corridor, clearly waiting for her, a disapproving scowl on her face.

Meg opened her mouth to say it wasn't what it looked like, realised it clearly _was_ what it looked like and so settled for a shrug in the older woman's direction.

"Come on pup, snap, snap, let's get a bustle on," Colette said impatiently, in a weird echo of Meg's own earlier behaviour. "There's too much to do and not enough time. If we don't get you fitted today, it will be impossible to get your dress finished for the ceremony and goodness knows how I'm going to deal with invitations and arrange the catering in less than three weeks."

Meg literally staggered with shock.

"You know. How do you know? she demanded, her mind filling with thoughts of hidden surveillance cameras.

"Chuck," Colette replied succinctly.

Meg's eyes widened.

"He doesn't mind? He didn't say 'no'?"

Colette's harsh features softened into a genuine smile.

"Trust me, pup, he is THRILLED."


	26. Chapter Twenty Three

Life sucked, Sam decided, as he sat by the campfire staring glumly into the flames and listened to his brother upchucking somewhere in the woods behind them.

Fires, for instance, were the most pointless damned things ever invented. Even if he sat close enough to the blaze that his cheeks felt uncomfortably hot, his back and ass still remained numbingly cold. But if he turned around to warm his butt, his face instantly froze.

And, despite his Sire’s hearty assurance that mosquitoes hated smoke, it was increasingly clear to Sam that what mossies loved was the light of a fire and what they positively _adored_ seemed to be the blood of thirteen year old pups. Sam had so many hot, swollen, red hives on his body he probably looked like a victim of bubonic plague and the damned things itched so badly he thought he might scratch his skin off before the 'fun' vacation was finally over.

Always assuming Dean’s case of ‘minor’ food poisoning didn’t evolve into some mega potentially fatal illness involving medivac to the nearest hospital. Sam allowed himself to daydream longingly for such an outcome, then realised it was probably a bit uncharitable to hope his already miserable brother got even sicker just so they could all escape. Obviously, he didn’t actually want Dean to be seriously ill.

Still, if it were going to happen anyway, at least there were some positives to the idea.

Who knew badly cooked river fish could do that kind of number on someone as fit and healthy as Dean?

~

Mary had been on tenterhooks for weeks.

Although Sam and Dean had only been gone for five days, she had been filled with a sense of foreboding since receiving the telephone call from John almost two months earlier. John had insisted that he be allowed to take the two pups on a camping trip to Pine Ridge during the summer recess.

When she had failed to dissuade him from the idea, she had suggested they made it a ‘family’ vacation so she could accompany them. John had refused, insisting that a camping/fishing/hunting trip between a Sire and his pups was a necessary part of all boys’ upbringing. A bonding experience, he called it.

To be fair to John (which was something she still attempted to be, despite everything) he had a valid point. Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have had any objection. It was about time John put a bit of effort into his parenting instead of just poking his head over the parapet once or twice a year with a fleeting visit to Lawrence.

And, of course, Dean had been thrilled by the idea. His hero worship of John had not lessened.

Even Sam had failed to overly complain. Since the main source of his antipathy towards his father was John’s constant absences, Sam had found it difficult to verbalise reasons why the trip was an objectionable idea. He’d settled primarily for muttering that he didn’t see why they were camping in tents like savages when perfectly good hotels were available for vacations.

Dean had confidently dismissed her worries, pointing out it wasn’t as though he was planning to ‘flash his junk’ at his Sire.

At fourteen, except for a notable deepening of his voice, Dean had still shown no overt signs of puberty but, because of his thickset frame, height and now husky voice, this was not evident to anyone except the two of them. The only visible proof of his failure to mature like an average Beta was the bare hairless skin of his pubic mound and no-one had cause to witness that part of his anatomy.

Sam, at thirteen, was definitely evidencing some pubescent changes. A spurt of growth earlier that year had already brought him to the same height as his brother and his previously lean frame was visibly thickening. He still spoke with the high voice of a young pup but, with increasing frequency, his voice would crack mid-sentence with the evidence of its imminent breaking. And Sam was also starting to spout hair just about everywhere. Even his back was beginning to show a spattering of downy pelt. Mary had absolutely no doubt her youngest pup had pubic hair too, though that was hardly a conversation she had initiated with him.

She trusted Dean absolutely. She knew he was a mature and sensible pup who knew to keep his ‘oddity’ concealed from John, even if neither of them had ever broached the reason for the necessity of such caution in actual words. There was, in theory, no reason why the vacation should be a problem. Yet when her cell phone rang on the sixth day and John’s name flashed onto the screen, she was struck by a panic so severe she could barely keep her knees from buckling.

~

John had always been proud of his oldest pup.

As an Alpha, he’d always known his pups would sadly fail to echo his own genetic legacy. As Betas, even if they were lucky enough to inherit his height and looks, they would never be his equals in strength or muscle. Dean was, however, as close to a little clone of himself as he could possibly wish for under the circumstances. Yes, it was Sam who more closely matched John's colouring and features and it even looked now as though Sam would grow even taller than Dean given the way he had caught up this past year but, despite Dean more closely resembling Mary than himself facially and the oddity of his green eyes, everything else about his older pup screamed mini-John and that made the Alpha a truly satisfied man.

So it didn’t surprise him that Dean continued to insist he was ‘fine’ even though he was doubled over with cramps and was vomiting so constantly that it seemed likely he would rupture his stomach. At the very least, John knew his pup’s inability to even keep water down for more than a couple of minutes meant severe dehydration was going to be inevitable.

John decided that ‘food poisoning’ that had already lasted a couple days and showed no signs of abating was not looking like something that would simply cure itself. Dean obviously required some form of medication but whenever he suggested taking Dean to a doctor, the pup vehemently protested it wasn’t necessary.

On the third day, when he was woken yet again by the sound of Dean vomiting and John found him kneeling in some trees behind their tent with his forehead sweaty and faintly feverish, John upped the ante to suggest a hospital vist would probably be the wisest move. John didn't welcome the idea of having to pack up the tent and drive his boys to the nearest town to find medical assistance but neither could he let the situation continue much longer.

“Call Mom,” Dean begged him. “Please. I promise I don’t need a hospital. I’m fine. Just call Mom to come get me. I just need to go home.”

And although John wasn’t looking forward to telling his wife that he’d nearly killed their oldest pup with a badly cooked trout, he figured that swallowing his pride enough to do so would be a hell of a lot cheaper than swallowing the cost of a hospital bill.

~

Mary managed the drive from Lawrence to Pine Ridge in Nebraska in a little over eight hours. It was a miracle she didn’t pick up any speeding tickets or crash head-first into a tree considering how exhausted she was when she finally arrived at John’s campsite in the fast car she'd stolen off her brother, but she was too fuelled by adrenaline to pay much notice to her own tiredness.

She’d _known_ for fourteen years that this day was coming yet it had still caught her unprepared.

She knew she was still trying to delay the inevitable by letting John assume the symptoms he’d described were no more than severe gastroenteritis. At this stage, nothing about Dean’s ‘illness’ would suggest otherwise to anyone who didn’t already know the detailed stages of an Omegá presentation.

What if John had panicked after calling her and had taken Dean to hospital instead of waiting for her arrival? What if the fixed progression of Dean’s presentation had advanced more rapidly than her research had led her to believe it should?

Everything she had read had suggested Dean’s severe gut ache and vomiting would continue for several days before the low fever accompanying it would spike to dangerous levels. He shouldn’t enter the near comatose condition that would allow the final dramatic physical changes in his body until the second week of his presentation. From the details John had given her, Dean had shown the first signs of his ‘food-poisoning’ no more than three days earlier. There should be plenty of time to get him out of the camp, stay the night in a motel for some much needed sleep for herself and still drive him back home to Lawrence before he entered the final stages of his change.

~

Sam was really pissed at his mother’s failure to rescue him from hell on earth.

He’d been thrilled when she’d swooped into camp, driving his Uncle’s souped-up muscle car like an avenging angel. He’d struggled not to snicker as Mary had torn a strip off John for ‘poisoning her pup’. She’d glowered and snapped and snarled at the big Alpha as she’d supervised his helping Dean to the car and arranging him in a make-shift ‘bed’ on the backseat.

His mother had been so bad-ass in her maternal fury that Sam had been not been keen to put himself in the line of fire. He’d hung back, letting his mother vent her spleen on his Sire, and feeling sorry for his brother whose efforts to protest he was ‘fine’ were met with short shrift by their incensed mother.

Sam had been so busy being unobtrusive that, by the time he registered his mother leaving the camp in a furious squeal of tyres and flashing rear lights, it was too late.

John just turned to him with a shrug.

“So, looks like it’s just the two of us for the rest of the vacation.”

“Joy,” Sam muttered to himself, slapping at his arm as another vampiric mosquito landed.

~

Two days after their return to Lawrence, Dean's fever intensified until Mary feared he would self-immolate. His skin was almost too hot to touch.

"I once read that in the ancient days, when a Primá died, his Omegá would voluntarily walk into his funeral pyre," Dean gasped, struggling for breath between the spasms and cramps that were wracking his body. "They said that as the Omegá burned to death, he wouldn't scream with the pain. He would just smile quietly, enigmatically, as though his sacrifice was the key to understanding some wonderful secret."

"Do you think that's true?" Mary asked gently, as she wiped his fevered body with a cool wet towel.

"I think they were full of shit. It must have hurt like fuck," Dean said, then winced and added, "Sorry, Mom."

"You get a temporary free pass on swearing," she assured him.

But it was maybe an hour before he spoke again, just at the point she was sure the slow easing of his ragged gasps for breath were less a sign of recovery than evidence he was lapsing into semi-consciousness.

"I think...I think maybe it makes sense to me now," Dean added, a little dreamily. "Maybe if you're born in fire, going out the same way is okay. Like closing the loop."

It was five days before he spoke again. His eyes were no longer clouded with pain but hot with anger.

"I hate you," he said and, though his voice was a raspy whisper from a throat dry with disuse, the words struck Mary as brutally as any roared outrage.

"I'm sorry," she said, pointlessly.

"You should have told me. Why didn't you tell me?" The accusation was harsh, and fully justified.

"I didn't know how to," she confessed.

"You let me think...let me believe..."

"I didn't know what...."

"You should have told me," he insisted. "You let me believe I was..."

"A Beta," she agreed, apologetically.

His eyes flashed with fury. "HIS SON!" he yelled. "You let me think he was my DAD!"

Mary blinked with astonishment.

"If I'm a... if I'm not a Beta, he's not my Sire. You... you should have told me."

Of all the reactions Mary had anticipated, this was definitely not one of them. Maybe it was shock or maybe there was even some sense of relief for Dean to finally understand his own body but, clearly, in this moment, the worst tragedy for Dean was not the loss of his identity and his expected future but the perceived loss of his father and that was the one loss Mary could deal with.

"Dean, I swear to you that John Winchester _is_ your Sire."

Dean uttered a choking, sobbing laugh of derision.

Mary remained calm, implacable and sincere. "May the All-Father himself strike me dead if I am lying. John Winchester is the only man I have ever taken to my bed. Either he _is_ your Sire or this is a whole different category of miracle."

"But he's an Alpha."

"I didn't say I had an explanation. All I have is the truth and the truth is that John _is_ your father."

Dean glared at her, eyes hot with fury, but she unflinchingly held his gaze, willing him to see the truth in her words, and eventually he sighed heavily and his anger visibly eased into sad confusion.

"I don't know how, baby, but your Sire is an Alpha."

"And yet I'm an Omegá."

"It would appear to be so," she agreed calmly.

"A Holy Whore."

"What?"she gasped, outraged.

"That's what Pops calls them...us...I never really understood that, how the Omadonna is Holy _and_ a Whore. Always seemed a weird thing to say."

"Your Grandsire is a weird man," Mary snarled.

Dean chuffed a laugh that was almost a sob. "He's going to hate me. Everybody's going to hate me."

Mary didn't try to deny it. She would never lie to her son again. "We won't tell him. We won't tell anyone. It's not like you have your designation written on your forehead."

"Just on my cock," Dean said. "Presumably in very small letters."

Mary gulped, struggling not to cry at her pup's wry joke.

"I'm scared, Mom," he confessed quietly. "I don't know how to be an Omegá. I don't want to be an Omegá."

"You aren't an 'Omegá'," Mary replied fiercely. "You are Dean Winchester, my son. Nothing else defines you. It doesn't matter what designation you are, what sex you are or what anyone else's opinion of you is. You are YOU, Dean, and you are brilliant and brave and wonderful and I could never wish to have ever birthed anyone more perfect than you are and always will be.

"I believe you should continue to appear to be a Beta only because, in this crappy world we live in, it would be the safest, easiest path you could take. I've seen first hand the way people treat your father for being an Alpha. I've read about the terrible, wicked things that are done to Omegáres, just because they are Omegá. It's not right and it's not fair. I can't change it but I would give my life to save you from suffering it.

"But this is your life and your choice. If you choose to walk out of this house tomorrow buck naked and declare to the whole world that you are Omegá then that is fine too. I will respect that, I will stand by you and love you and protect you regardless because you are and always will be my pup, Dean."

"Really?"

"Really," she promised.

Then, after a pause, added, "though if we could avoid the buck naked part it would be appreciated."


	27. Chapter Twenty Four

Meg slammed the phone down with a curse. "Fuckers said they're fully booked. Apparently, if I wasn't a hick I would _know_  good restaurants get fully booked weeks in advance. Snooty little bitch! Damnit, CP asks me to sort out one tiny stupid damned thing for him and I fuck it up. This client he's seeing today is apparently some huge big deal. I don't think taking him to Burger King is going to work."

"I don't think you fully appreciate the power you now have, cupcake," Crowley said, with a derisive sneer. "Just call them back and tell them to _clear_ a table for you."

Meg blinked at him in astonishment. "I can do that?"

"You're the Beta Wife of the Grandé Alpha Primá of the Midwestern States. Of course you can do that."

Meg looked at him doubtfully but firmed her shoulders and redialled the restaurant. This time she began the enquiry with her name, Megan Cainson, and with just those two words suddenly the best table was available.

"Bitch," she spat again as she hung up, still pissed despite getting what she wanted. "Minute she realised who I am, she couldn't do enough for me. I don't get it though. I thought the Free Betas hated the Packs. Why do they care about upsetting us?"

"Money," Crowley replied. "And fear, I suppose, but basically that relates to money too."  He smirked at her confusion. "The packs own the land," he reminded her. "That uppity bitch knows full well that we own the land her restaurant is built on. If she hadn't found a table after you'd identified yourself, Cain-Crowley would have issued an eviction notice before end of business today."

"But surely the packs don't own the actual buildings."

"So? Actually in most cases we do because we hold all the mortgages but either way we have the legal right to reclaim the land. It tends to encourage co-operation."

"I'm surprised the Free Betas haven't done something about it, changed the law somehow."

"Hence the need for Cain-Crowley.  The law is a slow, lumbering beast but short of actual war it's the only way the Free Betas can hope to steal Pack assets. So here, in this building, we have over 1200 lawyers and paralegals employed full time just to keep the status quo. 277 of them are Alphas, the brightest and best we could find though that's not saying much since the words 'smart' and 'alpha' are usually contradictory terms. Still, they look good in a suit and tend to make opposing counsel piss themselves. The real talent here are Betas but obviously all employees, Alpha and Beta alike, are pledged to the Pack, even if they were originally Free Born."

"That reminds me of something hicky I noticed earlier," Meg said. "There's something weird about the distribution of the designations. If Alphas are born totally randomly, scattered evenly throughout the Beta population, why do they only seem to be in the cities?"

"If a teen presents as an Alpha in a small community they are 'encouraged' to move to a city. The cities have facilities for dealing with rut rage."

"Facilities being the polite word for brothels?"

Crowley shrugged. "Anyway, the Alphas tend to remain in the Cities as adults or join the military, but never seem to return to the small towns. Probably because the Church of Abel tends to be more active in rural communities."

“Okay, I’ve done the math and it still makes no goddamned sense to me,” Meg declared.  “According to the last census, there are 158,634 declared Alphas in the US. The majority of whom either work for the military or live as Free Alphas in the largest cities, which I guess _does_ make sense, but the distribution is still completely skewed.”

“New York’s ‘finest’ are almost exclusively Alpha,” Crowley agreed. “That’s almost 30,000 Alpha cops in just one city.”

“That’s not a police force. That’s an Alpha army.”

“Well, population wise it’s less than 3% so it doesn’t jump out and slap the New York Betas in the face but, you’re right, if they actually sat down and thought about it, it’s a pretty scary number of Alphas in one relatively small place.”

“And it’s only really happened in the last seven years,” Meg pointed out. “Since Raphael became the Grandé Alpha Primá of the North Eastern States. It’s as though Alphas have flooded into the region ever since he took over the Pack Hall in Philadelphia.”

“And, unbeknownst to the Betas, the majority of them are _not_ Free Alphas,” Crowley told her. “They are all pledged to Raphael, even though they live outside of the actual Pack Lands.”

“How the heck is Raphael controlling that many Alphas?”

“He’s a very proud Primá with a very lusty traditional Omegá,” Crowley replied, dryly.

Meg blinked. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

Crowley chuckled wickedly. “That’s _everything_ , silly girl. You still haven’t figured it out have you?”

“Figured what out?”

“Norway,” Crowley replied succinctly.

Meg offered him a blank expression and shrugged her bewilderment.

Crowley, who adored feeling like the smartest person in a room, puffed up like a peacock and grinned at her. “What do you know about Norway?”

Meg thought about it. “Gabriel’s the top Primá there, the King in all but name, and they don’t have any Free Betas or Beta Law.”

“And…” he prompted.

“And the Omegáres there fuck like rampant bunnies,” she added, “which is apparently all Chuck’s fault.”

“Oh indeed,” Crowley mocked. “Chuck, the bold emancipator of Omegá flowers everywhere.”

Meg stiffened with offence. “What Chuck did there was great,” she insisted. “He’s right. An Omegá's flower is not the property of a Primá. Omegáres’ bodies belong to themselves, just like a woman’s. If CP ever thought he had the right to tell me what I could or could not do with _my_ cunt, I’d bitch-slap his ass so hard they’d hear it in goddamned Norway. Why should an Omegá be any different? This whole ‘faithfulness’ shit is just crap that was invented by men to empower themselves. They just don’t want to take the chance they might accidentally bring up another guy’s pup.”

“You’re absolutely right,” Crowley agreed easily. “It’s male instinct to want to procreate little versions of themselves whilst destroying the offspring of their rivals. Just look at what happens in Lion prides. The first thing a new dominant male Lion does is kill the cubs of his predecessor. The idea of chastity and faithfulness in women and Omegáres is just pandering to male ambition and pride. So, yes, what Chuck did for the Norwegian Omegáres was ‘great’. But that’s not why he did it.”

“Why the hell else would he do it?” she scoffed.

“Just like everyone else, you’re completely missing the point,” he mocked. “It’s all smoke and mirrors, Meg. It’s all sleight of hand. Sometimes I even wonder whether Chuck's left hand knows what his right hand is doing.”

“I don’t understand what you’re getting at,” Meg huffed.

“Let me explain it in small words. None of what Chuck is doing is about _Omegáres_. Because Chuck is an Omegá and Chuck is apparently all about Omegá rights, everyone _thinks_ this is about Omegares. But it isn’t, not really. They’re just a huge red herring that he’s waving in people’s faces to deliberate divert them from seeing what it’s really all about. This isn’t about Omegáres, Meg. It’s about _Primáres_.”

“Try smaller words,” Meg snarled. "Because I still don't know what the fuck you're smoking."

Crowley shook his head in frustration. “It is so damned hard to be this smart and be surrounded by stupid people,” he grumbled. “But, I’m a patient man so I’ll try to put this in a way even _your_ little brain might understand.”

“Careful,” Meg warned. “I’d hate to have to tell my husband you need yet another attitude… re-adjustment,” she said with a wicked smirk.

Crowley paled momentarily, then shook himself and returned her smirk with one of his own.

“Actually, that’s _exactly_ what I’m trying to explain to you. Imagine the scenario in Norway. Omegá brides insisting on their right to be worshipped by any and all Alphas that take their fancy. All well and good, but how do the Primáres react to that? They can’t say ‘no’ but they are just as prone as any male to feel threatened by the idea of other males encroaching on ‘their’ mates. It doesn’t matter that Alphas can’t impregnate Omegáres, that doesn’t stop a Primá's hindbrain feeling jealous, feeling a need to prove ownership and dominance. So what does a Primá do to assert his position as Pack leader?”

“He fucks the Alphas,” Meg replied.

“Bingo. The Primá of a ‘promiscuous’ Omegá is biologically incapable of not physically responding to the perceived threat to his authority by proving he has the biggest, baddest cock. He does so by regularly asserting dominance over the Alphas in his immediate inner circle.”

“Because they are the ones likely to be blessed by the Omegá's attentions,” Meg said, understanding dawning on her face. “And then, because they then immediately assert dominance over the Alphas directly beneath them to reassert _their_ masculinity after being fucked like little bitches, and so on and so forth, and even the lowest Alphas still have Betas to fuck to make themselves feel better about themselves, that means the Primá 's pheromones get regularly disseminated throughout the entire pack.”

“And the pack remains cohesive and everybody remains dedicated to the idea of the Pack being more important than any individual,” Crowley agreed, then frowned. “I’m not a little bitch.”

“If you say so,” Meg snickered, “But I’ve seen your new office chair, Crowley. You can call it a ‘throne’ if you like but I’m pretty damned sure you bought it for the 6-inch deep padded seat.”

“Yes, well not all of us have the luxury of living with Castiel,” Crowley replied snootily. “I’m sure you’d need an even softer seat yourself if you didn’t have the benefit of constant undiluted Primá pheromones.”

“Yup,” Meg agreed easily, “But unlike _you_ , I don’t pretend not to enjoy it.”

“I never said I don’t enjoy it. I just don’t always like the…consequences,” Crowley argued.

After the sixth time Castiel had been faced with Crowley openly disrespecting him in a board meeting of Cain-Crowley, the Primá had given up trying to keep their battles private. He had taken Crowley on the boardroom table, right in front of all the other senior Alpha lawyers, and had done so with such thoroughness that the solid oak table had been broken in two. Crowley had muttered for days about getting splinters in his knees.

“Then stop pissing CP off all the time and he won’t…Hang on. Hang on a damned minute. You keep defying CP, you keep backing him into corners and _forcing_ him to remind you he’s in charge and I thought you were just cocky or stupid or maybe even just masochistic…but you’re doing it on purpose, aren’t you?”

“See, you aren’t as stupid as you look, Meg,” Crowley agreed.

“And there I was thinking you actually were secretly a little perverted bitch who likes being publicly humiliated,” Meg smirked. “But really it’s all about the power for you, isn’t it?”

Crowley shrugged. “I get a _lot_ more out of my minions if I don’t let the general pheromone level get too depleted.”

“So you’re keeping yourself ‘topped up’ to deliberately disseminate it through your minions so that you can control them.”

“So I can _inspire_ them, keep them focused. That fucking Docking Law wouldn’t have happened if the lesser Alphas in Cain-Crowley had been paying attention, been _focused."_

Meg thought about it. “So what you’re saying is that when CP finds his Omegá , as long as that Omegá chooses to be… promiscuous… then CP’s pheromones will naturally be spread throughout the Pack, making it stronger.”

“Not just stronger. Even though the average Betas inside a Pack tend to receive a far more diluted amount of the pheromones, given most of them receive them at a significant distance from the Primá himself, their loyalty is still reaffirmed at a chemical level. The whole shitstorm of Free Beta Society would never have happened if Primares hadn’t stopped fucking their Alphas.”

“Fuck,” Meg breathed. “That makes sense but I don’t know how to feel about it as a Beta myself. You’re basically saying that the reason so many Betas rebelled and demanded to live outside the packs was because they were no longer under Primá mind control. I see the fucked up results of that happening, and I’m hardly the poster girl for Beta society being a good place to live, but I can’t believe that it’s any better to have a society that works only if people are effectively drugged into obedience like zombies.”

Crowley scoffed rudely at her words. “You’re the absolute last person I’d expect to spout the nonsense that pheromones are about mind-control. You’re married to a Primá. You have more of his pheromones in your little finger than I have in my whole body and you aren’t a drugged obedient zombie, are you? If Primá pheromones could make you behave differently then you’d hardly still be an irritating, irascible little guttersnipe.

“Primá pheromones just smooth over the self-indulgent impulses that make people do stupid selfish things out of personal interest. You’re still you, unfortunately in your case, but a _better_ you. You’ll never hear a pheromone-happy Pack member saying ‘I wish I hadn’t done that’ or ‘I wish I hadn’t said that’. They think before they speak, or act. They consider the feelings of others. They see the Pack as ‘family’ and act accordingly. Pheromones don’t make people obey, Meg. They make people _care._ ”

“So until CP finds an Omegá, unless _he_ becomes a lot more ‘promiscuous’, nothing will work right in this Pack either,” Meg pondered.

“Well, he’s still better than his Sire,” Crowley allowed. “At least Castiel can be ‘encouraged’ to do his duty. Cain is so stingy with his cock that it’s a miracle the US has stayed together at all. Though, if he hadn’t fractured the American Union into three, we’d be in a far worse position, of course.”

“If you’re right about all of this, I’m surprised Chuck didn’t encourage Cain to be more dominant with his Alphas,” Meg mused. “Why didn’t he start with Cain’s Pack instead of Gabriel’s?”

“I have a theory about that,” Crowley said.

“Thought you might.”

“I believe it’s because Chuck didn’t want to change Cain’s natural personality. For some reason Chuck wanted the division of the remaining States to happen and if Cain had become the type of Primá who enjoyed flexing his power, he wouldn’t have become the first ever Primá to divide his own PackLands and let his sons inherit during his own lifetime.”

“Why is the division important?”

“I don’t know for sure,” Crowley admitted. “It took me a few years to understand the purpose of Norway. Chuck thinks in terms of decades. His actions rarely have immediately apparent repercussions. But I suspect it has something to do with sheer numbers. The thing is that this problem started centuries ago when the world’s population was far smaller. As the Packs began to be more ‘civilised’ and the Omadonna ceremonies stopped and new _morality_ began to supercede the old traditions, the packs slowly lost cohesion. Then a few Betas began to rebel and the rest is history. But if the rot had stopped _then,_ maybe it could still have been put right.

“Problem now is there just aren’t enough Primáres or Omegáres to ever reinstate the original ways considering the literal billions of Betas that now exist. In the whole of the US there are a total of maybe 150 Primáres. There are fewer than a hundred known Omegáres even counting the ones who have been purchased from abroad. Smaller, stronger Primary Packlands, with each of the Grandé Alpha Primáres ruling a dozen sub packs each makes more sense than just one Primary Pack Land from a pheromone dispersal point of view but, really, it’s still just dripping water into a leaking vessel. The Betas will continue to breed faster than the Packs can possibly expand their influence.

“Honestly, Meg, unless something pretty fucking dramatic happens like a Meteor taking out at least half the population, I can’t see how it can ever be put right again. Well in a country like this, anyway. In a place like Norway, it can work. In all the small countries and islands, the Packs have a chance to put things right. Here? Can’t see it happening. Take a miracle really, or a disaster. Or maybe a war. I find myself wondering why Raphael seems to be building an ‘army’.”

“Fuck,” Meg breathed. “Let’s hope Chuck knows what he’s doing.”


	28. Chapter Twenty Five

Dean was an Omegá. 

He didn't know how to get his head around that truth. 

He didn't even know what to _think_ about that truth. 

What little he knew, or had thought that he knew, about Omegáres simply couldn't _be_ truth and that was the most confounding part of it all. 

His mother was right. He was still himself. That wasn't wishful thinking or denial, it was simple fact. He was still the same person he had been two weeks earlier. He didn't feel any differently or think any differently or even, particularly, _look_ any differently. 

Well, except for the obvious.

 

Somehow, during his presentation, a pretty fucking dramatic change had happened to his ass.  

With his fingers and a couple of strategically placed mirrors he had investigated his new anatomy, his 'Flores'. He point blank refused to call it a 'flower'. He wasn't a fucking girl. Dean Winchester did _not_ have any body part named as goddamned girly as a _flower_. He had a _Flores_. 

And it was, well, pretty damned bizarre, to tell the truth. 

Two weeks previously, he'd had a normal _(presumably)_ rectum.  Presentation had somehow transformed the entrance to his rectum from a small circle into a crescent-shaped opening that began just behind his small scrotum and stretched the full length of his perineum and incorporated his anus. 

He felt stupid that he'd never considered his undersized genitalia to be a clue to his designation, since it seemed so fucking obvious in retrospect. 

But in his defence, although he’d heard schoolboy whispers about Omegares and vague rumours about 'docking', he genuinely hadn't really understood what he was listening to since he'd never actually seen an Omegá. He hadn’t even seen a photo of one. Dean had only ever seen artistic illustrations of the Omadonna in his Pop's Holy Testament and in those drawings the Omadonna had no male genitalia at all. 

So he simply hadn't made the connection. 

And the drawings he’d seen portraying the 'Holy Whore' had given him the impression that the _junkless_ Omadonna had a single, huge opening into his body into which the All-Father had poured his seed and then the Universe had subsequently poured back out.  Many of the drawings had been pretty terrifying to his younger eyes. He remembered one particularly horrific illustration of the Omadonna, sitting with his head back and his legs stretched open so wide that the main focus of the picture was the huge, gaping cavernous hole between the Omadonna’s thighs, from which the moon itself was emerging as it was supposedly being birthed.   

So, if he'd ever given it a lot of contemplation, he would have assumed what an Omegá had between his legs was just a single, vastly oversized hole. 

But careful examination of his new, alien, body led him to a different perception of Omegá anatomy.  What it actually appeared he now had was a distinct vagina between his legs in addition to his anus. A vagina that presumably had always been there but had now been revealed by the removal of the flesh that had previously covered his perineal area. 

Dean had never been particularly interested in biology but, like any teen, he’d avidly paid attention during sex-ed lessons _(that hadn’t bothered teaching anything except Beta anatomy, of course)_ and he knew female vaginas were protected by a membrane called a hymen. It seemed that Omegáres took the idea of a hymen several steps further and completely concealed their vagina behind a wall of flesh until Presentation. 

The Flores was one long sphincter that concealed both his vagina and anus.  It was held closed by strong muscles that initially resisted his efforts to investigate but, when he ran his fingers over the tight resistance, the muscles relaxed slightly and his fingertips met hot, wet fluid and soft, spongy flesh. When he cautiously pushed his fingers even deeper inside, a secondary wall of flesh seemed to rise from within, lining his opening with multiple layers of fragile ‘petals’ until his Flores resembled a flashy peony more than mere human flesh, and it became obvious why the organ was referred to as a ‘flower’. 

And as alien as the Flores was, nothing had been quite as terrifying as the sensations that had flooded him as his fingers had touched those fragile, blood-engorged ‘petals’. It felt as though every cell of the new flesh had its own nerve ending. Just the slightest, gentlest tap of a fingertip against the ‘petals’ caused his whole body to arch as though he’d sent an electric shock through himself. The reaction had been so intense that he hadn’t even been able to tell whether the sensation was pain or pleasure and, with each shudder of his body, the centre of the Flores had pulsed and throbbed and then opened wider like a hungry maw.

At that point he’d stopped in panic, overwhelmed by both the weird sensations and the fear that the opening would just keep expanding outwards until he was as wide open as the illustrations that had horrified him as a younger child. 

~ 

Dean thought Mary was about as cool a mother as any pup could want and he _knew_ he could discuss his worries and concerns with her and she would do everything she could to answer him without the situation being awkward or humiliating but he was a teen and she was his _mother_ and so, no, it just wasn’t happening.

Besides, what he really wanted to know wasn’t something she could answer ,so although Dean doubted a Minister of The Church Of Abel was going to be the best source of unbiased opinions on Omegáres, Dean figured that visiting his Grandsire would at least answer his most important concern; could he still pass himself off as a Beta?

Unable to convince him otherwise, because he could be just as stubborn as Sam if he put his mind to it, Mary insisted she at least should accompany him and she made a point of opening the safe, retrieving the handgun inside and placing it in her purse before they left the house despite her not having a permit to ‘carry’.

Because it was Farasday, she expected to find her Sire alone at the Chapel, preparing for the weekend services and was pleased her instincts were right. If something went wrong, if somehow something went _terribly_ wrong, there would be no witnesses.

Yet although Samuel Campbell greeted his daughter with bare civility, his welcome of Dean was as effusive as always and nothing in his face or body language indicated even the slightest amount of awareness that anything had changed.

Both Mary and Dean deflated from their nervous vigilance. Clearly there _was_ no visible trace of Dean’s designation if even Samuel couldn’t see it.

“I’m moving to High School this year, Pops,” Dean said, with attempted nonchalance. “So I thought it was probably time I stopped being such a kid about things. I was thinking, maybe, of trying to sit in on a sermon or two.”

Samuel’s face broke into a huge smile. “I knew it,” he crowed. “I knew if I left you to make up your own mind you’d come to your senses.”

Dean rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “Thing is, Pops, I don’t want folks to think I’m ignorant or stupid, you know? I thought maybe I could take some literature to read up on first.”

“Well, I have the latest edition of the Testament,” Samuel offered happily, “and some of the tracts we hand out to visitors.”

“That’d be great,” Dean said. “I get confused a lot about things. Like the Alphas, obviously, you know ‘cos it’s weird having one for a Dad, and I really don’t know anything about Omegáres either and I figure I should know stuff like that, before I go to my new school. It’d seem weird not to know that kind of thing, when everyone is going to know you’re my Pops.”

Mary was proud of Dean for managing to appear so cool and inventing a plausible reason for his questions but what really impressed her was the way he’d just, oh so casually, dropped John’s designation into the conversation.  Although Dean was as masculine as any boy pup she’d ever known, or even more so, it was impossible not to acknowledge the extreme ‘prettiness’ of his face. Dean’s huge green eyes, bow-shaped lips and perfect cheekbones were not ‘typical’ of a Beta. The best protection he had, to avoid even the smallest suspicion, was to always make a point of reminding people that John was an Alpha.  

“The Church Of Abel prefers not to dwell on the lesser designations,” Samuel replied. “There’s probably not much I can tell you that you don’t already know. As you said, your Sire _is_ an Alpha so you probably know more about _them_ than you wish to.”

“I guess,” Dean agreed, with a casual shrug. “I don’t know much about Omegáres though.”

“Why would you want to?” Samuel replied, but his expression was dismissive rather than suspicious.  “The odds of you ever seeing one are infinitesimally small, thankfully, so why dwell on something so unpleasant?”

Dean frowned at the word. “Unpleasant? I thought Omegáres were supposed to be ‘Holy’,” he challenged.

His Grandsire smiled at him condescendingly.

“Omegáres aren’t Holy, the _Omadonna_ is Holy.”

Dean bit his lip a little at the derision in Samuel’s voice. Whilst he’d thought he’d been fully prepared for his Grandsire’s bigotry, he hadn’t considered just how hurtful it felt to actually experience it. Still, he pushed himself to reply in an even, unemotional voice, “I don’t understand the difference, Pops.”

Samuel frowned at him, pursing his lips as he put his thoughts in order before answering.

 “Omegáres merely have certain physical characteristics that are similar to how more primitive people perceived the Omadonna might be. Because Pack Law was written in less enlightened times, Omegáres were historically accorded a legal status of Holiness and those Laws have not been repealed so, yes, I suppose you can still say they are _Holy_ from a purely legal point of view but, clearly, any modern civilized person understands that the laws that make them so became obsolete centuries ago.

“Still, the Church is not fundamentally opposed to the Omegáres continuing to symbolically represent the Omadonna’s sanctity. It is often helpful, particularly for the less educated members of the populace, to have a visible representation of their faith. But, obviously, Omegáres are just Icons of the Holy Omadonna, not worthy of veneration themselves. You could just as well worship a _bitch_ - _dog_ or a _cow_ as an Icon of the Omadonna. You are worshipping the glorious fertility of the Omadonna, _not_ the animal that represents him.”

“The Omadonna _is_ an Omegá,” Mary snarled, unable to keep quiet as she saw her pup flinch at being compared to an animal.

Samuel scoffed rudely. “I already knew I’d wasted all those years of teachings on you, Mary, given your choice of _husband_ but yet you still manage to further disappoint me with your ignorant views. The Omadonna is _not_ an Omegá. The Omadonna is a Holy Being that ancient primitive people tried to make sense of by attempting to compare some aspects of the Omadonna’s divinity with those of humans and, regrettably, came to the fallacious conclusion that those aspects implied the Omadonna was more similar to an Omegá than a human. It is only due to the Omadonna’s infinite mercy that he has not struck us down for applying such insult to him.”

He took a deep breath and settled into what Mary always thought of as his ‘Preacher’ mode as he continued to pontificate his twisted view of reality.

“Scripture tells us the All-Father created the universe by impregnating the Omadonna. The Omadonna gave birth to the Sun, and then the moon and then all of the stars and then the Omadonna whelped the Earth upon which we live. Then the All-Father decided to populate the world and did so, again, by impregnating his bride the Omadonna, and so the Omadonna birthed humans and all the animals of the land and the birds of the air and the fish in the sea.

“Early humans struggled with how to perceive the Omadonna as ‘male’ and yet the mother of all creation because they were trying to visualise a Holy Divine Being in terms they understood, so those early Packs saw how an Omegá is both male and female and imagined the Omadonna might look the same. They saw the vastness of creation and knew the Holy Whore must have copulated with the All-Father on thousands upon thousands of occasions to birth so many different species and, again, the primitive packs saw the sexual proclivities of the Omegáres and believed it was further proof that the Omadonna was also an Omegá.

“But in the Church of Abel, we have sifted through the fables and the myths, we have applied sense and logic and science and have recently reached the obvious and only conclusion which is that the Omadonna may still be beyond any human comprehension but he is **_not_** in any way connected to the sad abominations we call Omegáres.”

Mary rose to her feet in fury.

“BULLSHIT,” she roared. “I always knew the Ablest Church was heretical but you can’t just make the religion up as you go along.  You can’t keep rewriting scripture to suit your latest agenda. If the Omadonna is _not_ an Omegá, then why the hell does the All-Father Testament clearly state that Omegáres are highest of all?” she challenged.  “The Abel Tablet only denies the idea that Betas are lesser than Alphas and Primáres. Even the Abel Tablet doesn’t dare deny Omegáres their status as _above all others_.”

Samuel smirked, finding himself still on solid theological ground according to the latest translation of the Testament.

“As a result of the work done by the Boston University Linguistics department, we now have a much better understanding of Enochian. When the first All-Father Testament was first translated into Inglais, the scribe translated the word ‘supra’ as meaning ‘above’.  However, ‘supra’ may also be translated as ‘not comparable,’ and ‘not-comparable’ means ‘different’, and in the context of the entire Testament, it is a far more logical word.  So what the Testament actually says about Omegáres is that they are _different_ and that is evidently true.

“Different is not a prerogative term in itself,” he continued. “It’s merely a more accurate statement of fact. The non-human designations _are_ different.”

“And different means lesser?” Dean demanded.

“Well, naturally,” his Grandsire said. “Neither the Alpha nor Omegá designations are fully ‘human’ but, from a purely scientific point of view, even an Alpha is more human-like than an Omegá.  An Alpha can breed with a Beta and produce a perfectly normal pup like yourself, Dean, so in that respect, despite their physical differences, it is their primitive, animalistic mentality which is the primary reason they cannot be successfully absorbed into human society. An Omegá, however, is so inhuman that it cannot even birth a human pup. An Omegá is a genetic dead end in these enlightened times and since the poor silly creatures are biologically hot-wired to care about nothing except reproduction, and they can only birth pups of the other lesser designations, their continued existence is problematic for human society but that will soon be addressed by the Church.”

“The Church is planning to kill Omegáres?” Mary demanded, her expression one of horror.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Samuel scoffed. “They may only have a _symbolic_ sanctitude but the Church Of Abel does not discount the value of having such Icons within the faith for the benefit of its less educated followers. No Omegá will ever be harmed by the hands of a true believer. The Church is merely proposing that the creatures should be sterilised for the greater good of all.”

~

“So, that went well,” Dean said, with a quiet sniff, as Mary drove him home.

“He’s a wicked man,” she growled. “An evil bigot representing a Church full of equally rabid, evil bigots. As soon as we get home, I’m going to order a copy of the original All-Father Testament. Apparently the Packs still publish and sell it online.  Then you can read for yourself what the All-Father said about Omegáres instead of whatever bullshit they’ve printed in this _tenth_ re-write.”

“You don’t understand,” Dean said sadly. “I don’t care about what he _said_. I remember what I read about Omegáres in the school edition of the Testament and it definitely wasn’t anything like that. I’m smart enough to see this is just some kind of political crap by the Church.”

“So what, in particular, has upset you so much?” she asked, carefully.

“I’m scared,” he admitted. “I mean I was already pretty scared about the whole Omegá thing anyway but this feels different. Worse. I thought it was bad enough having to deal with the idea of _being_ an Omegá. What it meant for me as a person. Having to adjust to a body I don’t understand. But listening to Pops, listening to all that crap, I guess it just really struck me that I don’t want to **be** an Omegá. Not in a world where people like Pops live.”

Mary nodded, her eyes filling with tears.

“I know baby. I know.”

Dean sniffed again, rubbed his eyes, then offered her a weak smile.

“Still, the good news is he didn’t know.”

She choked a sobbing laugh of agreement.

“No. He didn’t. And if he didn’t, considering his absolute asshole hatred of Omegáres, then it’s probably safe to assume that no one else is going to know either.”

“How long?” Dean asked. “How long can I hide it, do you think?”

“I’m not sure, probably not indefinitely,” she admitted, “but I think… well, I think the best thing is if you think about moving to the Pack Lands, Dean.”

Dean flinched and twisted his face with distaste. “They’re savages, Mom. What makes you think I’d be better off there?”

Mary shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know, but the only reason we’re scared of the Packs is because of what we’ve been told about them by your Grandsire and, let’s face it, everything else he spouts seems like a load of bullcrap. What I _do_ know is the Packs believe in the original Testament. They _believe_ an Omegá is Holy. I can’t…well, I just can’t imagine it can’t be a better place for you than staying here.”

“Would you come with me? Join the Pack too?”

“Of course, baby. Even if that means never seeing John or even… even Sam again. I promise you I will always stay with you.”

Dean chewed on his lip uncertainly.

“Look, we’ve got time,” Mary assured him.  “Beta Law would make it illegal for me to even attempt to cross into Pack Land with you before you’re sixteen.  So we’ve got almost two years to think about what you want to do. Let’s see how you look at sixteen. Maybe you’ll keep growing. You’re already bigger and taller than people expect an Omegá to be. Maybe…I don’t know but maybe you _could_ successfully live as a Beta.”

Dean thought about her words and then nodded his agreement.

“Okay,” Mary said, turning the car into their driveway. Then she stiffened as she saw the familiar black car.

“Wipe your face and dry your eyes, Dean. It looks like your Sire is here.”

~

As John waited impatiently for Mary and Dean to return from wherever they’d disappeared to, he rummaged through the cupboards and fridge and cooker in search of whatever the heck it was that was making his nose twitch and his mouth fill with saliva.

He checked the cookie jar, suddenly convinced the sweet, honey smell had to be from fresh cookies, but all he found was a couple of stale Oreos.

Damn.

He was running out of places to check.

He hadn’t even realised he _was_ hungry before he’d let himself into the house but now that damned scent was driving him to distraction.

Sam had denied even smelling anything and had retreated to his bedroom to unpack his suitcase.

Although John was disappointed that Dean had left the camp and he’d struggled initially with being left alone with his younger, more temperamental pup, as the days had progressed he’d come to the conclusion that spending one on one time with Sam had probably been good for both of them.

Forced to communicate with his Sire, without Dean there to act as a buffer, Sam had gradually begun to open up to John.

Sure, a lot of it had been complaints in the beginning but as time passed they began to find some things in common and although Sam would clearly never see him with the same adoration as Dean unashamedly displayed, John was satisfied by the end of the vacation that Sam had at least developed respect for him, if not actual affection.

John’s biggest regret was that when Sam had finally thawed enough to tell him his dream of going to University and studying something like Medicine or Law, John hadn’t been able to assure him it would be possible. He hadn’t imagined he would ever take pride in fathering a _smart_ pup but he’d actually felt a blow to his own pride to realise that if Sam truly were as clever as he appeared to be, then University was still an impossible dream. In a world where so much of the economic wealth was possessed by the Packs, Beta organisations like Universities didn’t have the funding to even offer discounted places let alone scholarships.

The only Betas who attended University were those from rich families or families willing to put themselves in horrendous debt.  It wasn’t even that John was unwilling to contemplate the idea of taking out a loan. It was that as an Alpha it was highly unlikely he would be offered one.

In Free Beta society the rich Alphas were ones who were fortunate to inherit the wealth from their Beta families. An Alpha like John, thrown out of a family that was poor, and only able to work jobs that required his muscle might make a ‘comfortable’ living but was never going to be rich enough to put a pup through University.

Still, he shrugged, maybe Campbell would cough up something to help.

He really wished he knew where Mary had hidden whatever smelt so darned good.

Maybe he ought to call her, ask her, he thought.

But then, as though in answer to his prayers, he heard the sound of her car pulling up in the driveway.


	29. Chapter Twenty Six

Castiel's annoyance at being disturbed, despite having left instructions with his PA that he was not available that morning, abated considerably when he identified his unwanted visitor as Crowley so he offered him a guarded smile of welcome.

Ever since Meg had 'explained the facts of life' to him, as she had colourfully put it, his relationship with Crowley had improved immensely.  He'd told the small Alpha to stop winding him up and just _tell_ him when he needed 'attention' and at least it could be done on a bed rather than a table. Crowley had agreed, for the sake of his knees, and things had been running a lot more smoothly. 

Castiel had, admittedly, baulked when Meg had first told him. Though he was developing a healthy appreciation for sex under her enthusiastic encouragement, Castiel wasn't naturally a man who liked to fight his battles with his dick. But living with a Beta Wife who still had the habit of frequently bedding their mutual friend Benny, despite the wedding ring on her finger, had forced Castiel to embrace a far more liberal mindset as far as _all_ sex was concerned.

He thought his mother would be quite proud of him.

"Sorry, Castiel. I know you're busy. It's not a social visit or a booty call. I've got a case I think you're going to want to get involved in," Crowley said and, though his tone was breezy, his eyes were dark with anger.

"Tell me," Castiel invited, waving Crowley to take a seat.

"New clients. A Beta couple. They want to sue the City of Chicago for $10m because of Omegá abuse of their pup. 

"That's a new one," Castiel replied, raising his eyebrows in faint surprise.

"Gets better.  I pointed out they should be in the D.A.'s office pushing for a criminal prosecution and they said, wait for it, they weren't looking to prosecute. They just want compensation for financial loss."

"Exactly what loss?" Castiel demanded suspiciously.

"Well, that's where it gets really weird. Apparently the pup went to auction and nobody bid for them. So no bride-price is forthcoming and now the Beta family are pissed." 

Castiel frowned and shook his head in disbelief. "How could there possibly have been no bids? There are at least sixty unmated Primáres in this country alone. Usually the phone lines would have blown up with competing offers."

"The Omegá is, apparently, now too 'damaged' for any Primá to accept. Hence the accusation of 'abuse'.  The Betas claim that they signed their Pup over to the guardianship of the City of Chicago three years ago with the expectation they would eventually receive payment of a bride-price. So now that it isn't going to happen, they want compensation."

Castiel waved his hands impatiently, his eyes sparking with arcs of blue fire. "Forget the fucking Betas. Exactly what damage has been done to the Omegá?"

"Ah, well that's where it all gets more complicated.  The pup is so screwed up, in so many different ways, it's hard to know where to start."

Castiel growled, low in his throat, and Crowley hastened to elucidate.

"The Omegá is named Claire. 'She' is eighteen."

The Primá huffed with irritation. "All Omegáres are male, Crowley."

"I know _that_ , however it seems that Claire self-identifies as female."

Castiel blinked in astonishment but, after a moment's thought, he shrugged. "Weird, but there's no law against it. If 'she' wants to be female, that's _her_ prerogative."

"Hmmm, except 'wants' is a point of contention.  Claire didn't make that choice. _Her_ Beta parents did.  Apparently, when _she_ was born the parents were pretty damned sure of _her_ designation. They decided they preferred the idea of bringing _her_ up as a girl and consequently _she_ was docked as a newborn."

"Fucking insane monsters," Castiel snarled. "They mutilated their own pup!"

"As we unfortunately already know, docking an Omegá at fourteen apparently affects their development quite significantly and they are consequently less 'male' in appearance as adults.  I'm sure you can imagine what has happened hormonally in an Omegá who was docked at two days old."

"Without access to any male hormones, I assume Claire grew up to exhibit extremely female characteristics," Castiel suggested.

"She's apparently indistinguishable from a Beta girl," Crowley confirmed.  "Not even a robust hellion like Meg but a tiny, delicate, fragile feminine girl. Which is also what her parents led her to believe she was. Even after she presented, they allowed her to continue believing her anatomy was normal for a 'girl'.

"Apparently, the parents didn't intend to declare her as Omegá until she was sixteen. I gather they thought it would be more financially advantageous to 'sell' Claire directly to a Pack instead of paying auction fees. Which was probably right, but, anyway, it didn't work out that way.

"Unfortunately for everyone concerned, at fifteen Claire had a Beta boyfriend who encouraged her to go a little further than first base.  The Beta immediately reported her and the local town council swooped in to claim her. The parents had no Familial Alpha to act as guardian so they were forced to sign Claire over to the council for formal 'training'. Which we both know is a euphemism for several years of working as an unpaid whore.

"Then the town immediately sold her 'indentures' to Chicago.  That City, as you know, has a high population of teenage Alphas and runs a number of brothels to keep them under control. Brothels are expensive to run. Beta whores don't agree to fuck Alphas without decent financial incentives. So Claire, being a free fuck, was utilised rather 'enthusiastically' by City Hall to cut costs. As sickening as that thought is, it's not an unusual situation these days and it doesn't even break any specific Pack Law.  The Betas argue it is done in adherence with Pack Law since an Omegá must be ‘freely provided with everything they need or desire’."

Castiel growled again. "The tenet was written to enforce the obligation to provide for an Omegá without expectation of any reward," he snarled. "It was meant to prevent a Primá ever claiming he had somehow 'earned' the right to an Omegá's affection simply by providing for him."

"Of course," Crowley agreed. "However, the Betas have conveniently chosen to interpret the tenet to mean that since Omegáres naturally 'desire' sex, it must be provided for them and, since it is provided 'freely’, that means the Betas can use an Omegá as an unpaid whore for the Free Alphas.

"And although, obviously, the whole idea is a disgusting perversion, we know that Omegáres do not respond to sexual abuse the way other designations do. As a rule, the more often an Omegá is penetrated, the more their body craves even further sexual stimulation."

Castiel snarled low in his throat but nodded his agreement.  "The Betas use that physical response to justify themselves even though everyone knows the craving is just the physical manifestation of an Omegáres biological need to reproduce.  The body of a sexually abused Omegá becomes obsessed with the need to be impregnated and so welcomes further abuse in a desperate desire to conceive and, because an Omegá cannot conceive from Alpha penetration, the cycle of abuse just spirals out of control."

Crowley nodded his agreement, "Exactly. The usual outcome of the 'training' is that Omegáres develop a physical _addiction_ to sex, regardless of their thoughts or feelings on the matter, and they are physiologically designed to survive multitudinous penetrations so don't suffer any actual physical harm from such hard use.  The damage is usually purely psychological. 

"But Claire is a slight, delicate little thing, far less robust than an average Beta, let alone an Omegá, so it didn't take many months of this treatment for her to start showing less than the expected amount of enthusiasm for all this sexual largesse.  Since an Omegá refusing sex is practically unheard of, Chicago City Hall decided she clearly had health issues and sent her to Chicago General for treatment.

"Somewhat conveniently, _she_ was diagnosed with a faulty immune system and it was decided that Claire required a tonsillectomy."

Castiel surged to his feet with a roar of fury, his eyes blazing with preternatural light and he thumped his fist down on his desk so hard that it splintered apart. "THEY MUTED HER?" he roared.

Crowley flinched back in his chair but cautiously nodded his agreement. "And that," he confirmed, "is why no Primá offered a bid for _her_."

Castiel threw back his head and howled in fury. 

~ 

Having received the heads-up from Crowley even before he had taken the news of the disturbing situation to her husband, Meg had gone immediately to the Client Conference room where Sally and David Rogers were waiting.

As she bustled around, smiling, making refreshments and tidying files like the over-eager junior paralegal she had implied herself to be, it was easy to gain their trust.

“I can’t understand how a nice girl like you chose to work in a place like this,” David said, as he accepted a second cup of coffee.

Meg simpered at the compliment, offering him a sweet smile. “I’ve got to make a living, and in Detroit almost all the businesses are Pack owned, so what’s a girl to do? But it surprises me that you picked Cain-Crowley under the circumstances.”

David bit at the bait and took a long chew; “We had no idea before we walked in the door that this was run by … Alphas.” His mouth twisted with displeasure. “We’re just plain country folk. Farmers. We live in Ohio. We asked people for recommendations for a Law Firm that specialised in Omegá law and didn’t cost too much, and they all told us to come here. No one told us it was a _Pack_ firm. I don’t think our Minister will approve.”

“Ah, you attend the Church of Abel?” Meg inquired easily.

“Of course,” Sally confirmed. “It was a terrible shock when Claire was born.”

“I can imagine,” Meg said, dryly.

“But our Minister told us it wasn’t a punishment from the All-Father but an opportunity for our family to better ourselves. We really counted on the money, Ms Masters. We’re up to our neck in debt. We mortgaged heavily in expectation of receiving the money we are _due_ , so we really need to win this case.”

“When did you first realise Claire was Omegá,” Meg asked casually.

“The minute she was born,” Sally said. “Well, maybe not the minute because we didn’t really know what we were seeing until the midwife pointed it out to us. But then Dave called the Minister and he came over and confirmed it and told us what to do.”

“He told you to bring Claire up as a girl?”

“Oh,no, that was my idea,” Sally beamed. “Minister Oughton and Dave said we might as well just bring the pup up like any other farmstock, what with Omegáres just being animals really.”

“I figured it was no different to fattening any other animal up for sale,” David confirmed. “I didn’t think it was a good idea to get attached to it. I said we should just raise it in the barn with the other livestock. But Sally said having it in the house was no different than having any other house pet, so I let her have her way.”

“And I liked the idea of a little girl to dress up, and snipping off the unnecessary bits was just like we do with the bullocks we aren’t intending to breed from, and it made Claire such a pretty, well-behaved little thing.  I loved curling her hair and making little dresses for her,” Sally added cheerfully.

“Quite the seamstress, my Sally,” Dave said proudly.

“So it was like having a doll to play dress-up with?” Meg asked, her face carefully never losing its expression of friendly curiosity.

“Exactly,” Sally agreed. “I cried when they stole her from us.”

David confirmed this with a nod. “But, still, _it_ was going to go eventually anyway, so I cheered Sally up with a puppy and she puts bows and crap on _that_ thing now, so…” He shrugged expansively. “So the point is that we are owed our money and if _it_ can’t be sold because of whatever those idiots did to it after they took it away, then they can damned well pay us themselves.”

“What’s happened to Claire?” Meg asked. “Is she back with you?”

Sally barked a laugh of surprise. “Heck no. Only the All-Father can imagine what diseases she’s caught in that place. Anyway, she’s grown up now. Why would I want a grown up Omegá in my home?”

“As far as we know, the City is still using _it_ in a brothel,” David said, “And that’s another issue. Why aren’t we entitled to a proportion of the money they are saving by not having to pay for Beta prostitutes?  That’s why we need a good Lawyer. To get what's owing to us."

~

“Well done,” Victor said, as Meg stepped outside of the conference room and finally allowed the tension out of her body by taking a huge gulping gasp of breath.

“Did you get that all on tape?” she demanded.

“Every word,” the Alpha Lawyer confirmed.  He was one of Castiel’s trusted inner circle, one of the few Alphas that had been ‘dominated’ by the Primá himself. In Pack hierarchy there was a particular status accorded to any Alphas who directly ‘reported’ to the Pack’s Primá. ‘First’ Alphas like Benny and Crowley and Victor were only ever involved in Primary Pack business, so his participation in this issue was evidence of just how seriously Castiel was taking it.

“How did Castiel react?” she asked, carefully.

“He’s insane,” Victor replied. “He destroyed his office. Hell, he decimated most of the twenty-eight floor before he got control of his temper. He’s got the whole Pack running around in terrified circles trying to calm him down but when he hears this recording, he’s probably going to go ballistic _again_.”

“Good,” Meg said, shortly. “The only thing that kept _me_ calm in there was anticipating CP going _Primá_ on their asses.”

“Well, with what we’ve just recorded, the Rogers are definitely going to get whats 'owing' to them.”

“I thought courts wouldn’t accept conversations recorded secretly.”

Victor smirked wolfishly. “Beta Courts don’t.  A Pack _Conclave_ only cares about the truth, regardless of how it was obtained.”

Meg gasped with shock. “CP has actually ordered a Conclave for this?”

"Seems our Primá didn't waste his time studying Law.  He's just called up the Chicago City Council and cited several precedents for Pack Law trumping the rights of any Beta Court in matters where Omega abuse is 'clearly proven'.  The Betas are agreeing to a Pack Trial instead of a Beta Court because they've faked up a load of records to justify their actions. They think there's no way to 'clearly prove' anything, so they think its faster and cheaper for them to get this settled by Pack Law. They've forgotten enough about the Packs that they don't realise that, in a Conclave, a Prima has the right to use his pheremones to _compel_ honesty in the witnesses. So it’s going to be hell on earth here in a few hours, Meg. Castiel has summoned all of his Primás and, given the way he couched his ‘request’ for their presence, if they aren’t already on planes, they are definitely on their way to the airport.

“Benny’s taken half a dozen of his Second Alphas to Chicago to collect Claire _and_ the Free Alpha Guardian supposedly responsible for his, sorry, _her_ welfare.  A small army of Third Alpha Lawyers are individually collecting the various bit players in this shit pile, such as the Doctors who authorised the mutilations and, obviously, the ones who actually performed them and any and all ancillary medical staff who assisted. Oh, and now I need to send someone to pick up that bastard Ablest Minister they just told you about.”

“So CP is going to put them _all_ on trial?”

“Put it this way, there are going to be a few vacancies at Chicago General by tomorrow morning,” Victor said with clear satisfaction.


	30. Chapter Twenty Seven

To fully understand any situation, one needs context.

The majority of Free Betas were _not_ evil assholes but, as in any society, it was the loudest, most controversial opinions that received the most airplay.   The Church of Abel was a good example of the disparity between popularity and influence.  By the time John Winchester was born, the Church had been expanding its influence for over three centuries. During that time, it had acquired a great number of supporters and was both economically and politically powerful. 

Statistics, however, easily proved that only slightly more than 24% of the Free Beta society regularly attended Ablest services and, of those, at least 30% did so only to placate their family, friends or neighbors. So, in real terms, a silent majority of well over 80% of Free Betas believed the Church was a rabid, overly political organisation that was filled with religious zealots whose heretical teachings about the other designations were laughably wrong.

The problem with silent majorities, however, is that they are by definition 'silent' and, in their choice not to take a firm stand against the Ablest teachings, the majority of Betas were complicit enablers of the growing influence of the Ablest religion.

In fairness to those Betas whose guilt was though inaction rather than in actual deeds, it is far easier for anyone to take a stand in defence of perceived vulnerability of others. When the victims of injustice are the very boogeymen you fear, it is difficult to find the will to rise up in their defence.

Because Alphas were physically big and strong and terrifying, it never occurred to Free Betas that the very people who scared them so much were equally fearful of a world that was totally beyond their comprehension.

In many ways, Alphas were even greater victims of the Free Beta society than Omegáres were.

Unlike an Omegá, there were no visible clues whatsoever of an Alpha's designation until actual presentation. Even the behavioural changes between puberty and presentation were not a clear marker since _all_  teenagers struggle through periods of angst and anger. So all Alphas, without exception, had no ability to anticipate the changes suddenly thrust upon them.

For Free Alphas, who had been raised to _fear_ what they had become, the experience was traumatic and that trauma was frequently also accompanied by familial and community rejection. The physical changes that began with Presentation inevitably ended with the onset of three or more years of ‘rut rage’ and during that brief period of their lives, without the calming influence of Primá pheromones, the Free Alphas developed an uncontrollable primal desire for sexual conquest.

With Alpha hormones racing unchecked through their bodies, short-circuiting reason and replacing the ability to think with a primitive need to mate, it is little wonder that the Betas feared the presence of Alpha teens in their society.  

For an _adult_ Free Alpha to even contemplate ‘rape’ would be as unlikely as an adult house-trained dog peeing on the carpet like a puppy. When their teenage years were over and their bodies were no longer overloaded with testosterone, an Alpha was as capable of self-controlled sexual behaviour as any other designation.

But, for the three or four years of their late teens, Free Alphas _were_ the embodiment of nightmares. To a teen Alpha, the urge to mate was a primitive imperative that disregarded the ‘willingness’ of the object of their desire. A teen Alpha was as unconcerned with the concept of ‘consent’ as any wild animal might be.

Since there was no point in trying to control that behaviour, as the teens were literally incapable of supressing their impulses, the Betas concluded there were only three options. Either incarcerate them, find a way to satisfy them or apply a more permanent solution.

Truthfully, the latter option was discounted not because the Betas had a moral issue with the idea but because _adult_ Alphas were pretty damned useful to society. The first solution was also rejected for largely the same reason. If the Betas could find a way to ‘treat’ the teen Alphas’ urges, they could continue to attend school and learn how to be useful and productive members of society.  Plus the cost of supplying brothels, though high, was still considerably lower than the cost of providing correctional facilities in which to safely imprison them.

Given the scarcity of Omegáres, they were not easily available to the Cities for use in their programs of teen Alpha control so the majority of brothels were staffed by Beta females. However, where an Omegá _was_ available, their particular uniqueness provided a vast cost saving to the Cities that utilised them.  Even an enthusiastic Beta whore struggled to regularly service more than three Alphas a day, because of their oversized cocks, and in most of the largest cities, where the Alphas congregated, there were frequently several hundred Alphas of teen age.

When John Winchester was a teen, the City he had spent his _Rut Rage_ years in had been home to 247 teen Alphas. Even allowing for only ‘treating’ each teen twice a week, that equated to over 25,000 brothel fees a year that would have to have been funded by the City purse. But in John’s City, an Omegá _had_ been available to take most of the strain.  An average healthy Omegá was perfectly capable of addressing the needs of as many as fifty teens a day and remaining as enthusiastic about the last ‘patient’ of the day as he’d been for the first. 

John had attended twice a week, for his medically authorised ‘treatment’ session.  He was always booked into an hourly slot with five other Alphas and they would take turns slaking their needs for the duration of that hour. The Omegá was available for eight individual hourly sessions, seven days a week.  Two further hours a day were set aside for ‘emergency’ visits if a teen found his urges rising out of control in between regularly scheduled sessions.

On none of these visits had John specifically wanted to fuck an _Omegá_ although the experience was one he remembered with undeniable pleasure. At that point of his teenage development, just being offered a hole with a pulse was sufficient for his purposes. And when his _Rut Rage_ was over, and he lost the right to attend the brothel, he lost no sleep over knowing it was unlikely he would ever meet an Omegá again, let alone mount one.  From a sexual perspective, his urges were _naturally_ more inclined towards those of a Beta designation.

John Winchester was one of a relatively few number of Alphas who had _ever_ received the opportunity to fuck an Omegá at all, let alone with some regularity, and he’d only had that opportunity because of the fear, perversion and economic greed of the society in which he was born.

The original Pack structure wouldn’t have worked at all if the Alphas in a Pack were _naturally_ inclined to mount Omegáres. They were undeniably attracted to them, they frequently fantasised about them, but for a Pack-born Alpha, an Omegá was an object of pleasant fantasy, not of actual carnal desire. In the Packs, the lower Alphas never even dreamt of an opportunity to bed an Omegá.  Even if a pack was traditional, like Norway was now becoming, only _First_ Alphas might ever be invited by an Omegá to offer ‘worship’. 

To a Pack-born Alpha, an Omegá was just an ‘untouchable’ dream.  They were objects of desire only in the way that a Supermodel or Film star is desired. Just as a normal teen might keep the poster of some Icon on their wall to fantasise over, with no true hope of ever meeting them, so an average Pack Alpha might drool over his Primá’s bride and even include him in a myriad of masturbatory fantasies, but would laugh at the suggestion that he might ever have a hope of touching him.

Although Alphas desired Omegás, their desire was rarely more substantial than a _crush_ over an unobtainable fantasy. For lower Pack Alphas, on the extremely rare occasions they had the opportunity to actually meet an Omegá, rather than just see him from afar, they invariably made complete fools of themselves by acting like blushing, giggling pups. 

Ask any of those Alphas what an Omegá smelt like and it is unlikely they would even know the answer. 

For a Free Alpha like John Winchester, however, the smell was so ingrained in his memory that, even after more than twenty years, when Dean entered the house and the faint trace of honey sweetness he had been scenting was replaced by a full blast of pungent perfume, John knew _exactly_ what that smell indicated. 

However, the reason that fact needs to be considered in the entire context of the situation is that the smell did _not_ fill him with desire. He was no longer a teen Alpha at the mercy of his dick and Beta machinations. Neither was he even _naturally_ inclined to find an Omegá an object of _real_ sexual lust.

So although the scent flooded his senses and instantly allowed him to make the immediate connection between his memory and what it clearly indicated about the designation of the pup approaching him, John did not respond with feelings of attraction.

It was not lust that caused his eyes to instantly flare red, or his mouth to open into a full-toothed snarl, or the growling roar that came unbidden from his throat in response to Dean’s approach. 

It was insane rage.

~

Dean was understandably nervous when they pulled up at the house and saw John's car but not overwhelmingly so. He did as his mother suggested, wiping his face and double checking in the rear view mirror that his eyes weren't suspiciously red or swollen. 

Despite his nerves he was equally excited to see his dad and keen to see Sam so he entered the house with a weirdly ambivalent combination of fear and exhilaration. There was no reason to suppose his dad would be anymore aware of his designation than his Pops, he told himself.

So he entered the house a couple of steps ahead of his mother and, seeing John alone in the hallway, greeted him with a deliberately breezy, "Hi, Dad. Where's Sam?"

For a brief moment, John returned his greeting with a welcoming smile. Then the Alpha's expression changed, the smile slipping off his face to be replaced first with puzzlement and then a distinct frown.

Instinct halted Dean's forward momentum even as John wrinkled his nose and took a deep, unmistakable sniff in his direction. Wharever scent he caught caused him to flem dramatically, his upper lip drawing up into in involuntary sneer that revealed the sharp points of his teeth.

Dean froze in place, his heart beginning to hammer in his chest.

Beside him Mary was rigid with tension, her eyes darting worriedly between her husband and her eldest pup.

For an endless moment, the three were locked in a frozen moment of endless possible outcomes and then, with a roar from John's throat and a blaze of red from his eyes, the tableau was shattered and, like a striking cobra, John's right hand darted forward and clamped onto Dean's throat.

Dean barely had time to blink before his dad's fingers closed around his neck and closed so firmly that he didn't have a chance to even catch a breath before his windpipe was nearly crushed by the pressure of John lifting him off his feet and shaking him, one-handed, like a terrier viciously savaging a rat. He struggled, panic stricken, punching and kicking wildly as his face reddened and his eyes bulged and still it was impossible to gasp even one tiny gulp of air into his lungs.

And even as lights flashed across his vision like exploding fireworks and it seemed impossible that his head wouldn't simply explode from the pressure, he registered his mother leaping between himself and the monster wearing his Sire's face.  He could hear her screaming _something_ but the words themselves were lost in the rushing sound in his ears and the frantic pounding of his heart. 

He registered his mother grabbing at his Sire's arm, saw her adding her own punches and kicks to his own as she sprang to his defence in an almost insanely pointless attack against the huge Alpha, but the whole thing seemed detached, almost dreamlike and he knew he was losing consciousness, losing _life_ and it was then that he knew, beyond doubt, that he was going to die at the hands of his own father.

For just one brief moment he almost welcomed the knowledge.  

From the instant he had understood the nature of his presentation, the reality of his designation, Dean had felt bereaved. Losing his identity and his perceived future, left only with the fear of knowing he was an Omegá in a world populated by people who would seek to wound him and use him and abuse him and humiliate him and even mutilate him for their own sick satisfaction, he could not be blamed for wondering, if only for a moment, whether it might not be preferable to take the escape that death offered.

As fast as that thought struck him, it was gone. Vanquished. Discarded as a brief, temporary madness. Because,whatever the future brought to his door, in that moment, Dean Winchester decided, _fuck that shit_.

He wanted to live.

Trying to control his right arm felt like pushing through thick treacle as oxygen deprivation stole his ability to co-ordinate any of his limbs but, when one of Mary's punches managed to connect hard enough to momentarily distract John, Dean managed to gulp a minute amount of air into his lungs and even that tiny amount of oxygen gave made enough difference that his hand stopped grasping wildly and instead reached its intended destination; the purse still slung over his mother's shoulder.

The sound of the gun cocking shouldn't have been audible over Mary's screaming but, perhaps an Alpha's hearing was preternaturally attuned to identifying danger because the moment Dean primed the gun and pointed it in his Sire's direction, John froze in place.

He hesitated for a second, weighing the odds, recognising the high probability that should he simply snap Dean's neck the pup would almost certainly pull the trigger in an automatic reaction even as he died.

Perhaps then it was simple self-preservation or, perhaps, that brief moment of mental reasoning rather than primal action was enough to snap John out of his blind rage, but, whatever the reason, John Winchester opened his hand and instead let Dean collapse to the floor.

Dean dropped to his knees, gasping huge wheezing breaths that agonised his throat but drew blessed air into his aching lungs and, though he was barely sensate and his eyes were still flashing so much that he could barely see, somehow he held onto his mother's gun and, despite his hand shaking and his whole body trembling with shock, still he kept the weapon pointed towards his Sire.

It was a relief when Mary scrambled back to his side and relieved him of its burden.  Dean relinquished it willingly into her hands, not only because she could actually _see_  who she was aiming at but also because it freed him from having to discover whether, when the immediate danger was over, he was even capable of pulling the trigger against his own Sire.

Mary had no such hesitation. Though she still loved her husband, despite everything, it was the comfortable habitual love of familiarity and remembered passion, not the fierce, protective love of a mother for her pup. If she had to choose between them, there _was_ no choice. Dean was, and always would be, the only winner of that decision.

Perhaps John saw that on her face or even smelt it in her scent because, though his expression remained implacably furious, he made a gesture of peace and took a slight step backwards so he was no longer within striking range. Though Mary relaxed minutely, she did not make the mistake of lowering her weapon.

"Listen to me, John," she said, her voice hoarse from screaming all the words he had previously failed to hear. "He may be Omegá, but I swear to you he _is_ your son."

John's lip curled in derision and he scoffed his disbelief. "What kind of a fool do you take me for?" he growled. "I've clothed and fed and housed your bastard pup for fourteen years, bitch, and you might have gotten away with it forever if he'd presented Beta like you obviously expected. I might never have known. But maybe the All-Father did this to punish you for your lying, whoring ways."

"I have never bedded any man but you," she swore but, unlike the effect of the same sincere words on Dean, her honest declaration met nothing but scorn.

"Whore," John spat. "I thought you were different. Thought you were something special, Mary, but you're just another Beta bitch. You've been laughing at me for years, making me bring up your bastard pup. What did you want more, Mary? A father for your bastard or an Alpha cock to ride?"

In her fury, Mary was momentarily tempted to spit that she hadn't received _either_ in a good many years. That John dared to complain about feeding and clothing and housing Dean when he hadn't contributed monetarily to the family in a decade was an insult hard to swallow but she refused to be diverted by such an irrelevance.

"Dean is your son, John. Surely you can see that with your own eyes, see how much of your DNA he bears. Look at him. Look at his height and his strength and his... his attitude, John. He is an Alpha's son. Your son. Look at him. SEE him."

"I'm looking at him, Mary, and all I see is a cock-hungry Omegá bitch ready for an Alpha to give him a good fucking! That's what I see, Mary, and I can't believe I never saw it before, with his big green whore eyes and his cock-sucking mouth. I know what Omegáres are, Mary, and your fucking father is right. The only thing 'holy' about an Omegá is the huge greedy hole between their legs."

Dean gave a sobbing whimper, curling into himself under the verbal assault from a Sire he adored and it tore at Mary's heart not to grab at him and hug him and assure him John's words were wicked lies but she dared not remove her full attention from the danger John posed. Her eyes filled with tears of both sorrow and frustration, but she kept her focus, and her weapon, on the Alpha.

"If you touch him, I will kill you," she said.

John scoffed a bitter laugh. "What kind of monster do you think I am?" he spat. "He's just a pup. I don't care that an Omegá is 'legally' an adult on presentation. I don't fuck pups. Even if I had any interest in greedy Omegá  cunts, I wouldn't want to fuck some snivelling little snot-nosed pup," he told her with brutal honesty. "I don't want your dirty cunt, either, now I know you tricked me into marrying you while you already carried a beta's pup in your belly."

Mary flinched but lifted her chin proudly.

"I was a virgin," she reminded him tearfully. "You know I was."

 And John _did_ remember tearing Mary's hymen and _did_ clearly remember waking with her after their first copulation and somehow knowing, without doubt, that his seed had planted a pup.

And yet, he also knew his memory _must_ be faulty because everyone knew an Alpha can't sire an Omegá. It was a biological impossibility.

 "He's your son," Mary insisted, again, and John struggled not to snap her cheating, lying neck on the spot. Only the gun between them held him to the spot and even that, he considered dispassionately, was not an insurmountable problem. He could probably move faster than she could react, now she was near blinded by tears.

He'd made a stupid mistake, he realised with regret. Instead of  giving in to his instinctual urge to kill a rival's pup, he should have attacked _her._

_He still could._

For a moment he seriously considered the option.

He could kill Mary, take his son Sam, and leave Lawrence.

But what was he going to do about the Omegá? The bastard Omegá. The... the immensely _valuable_ Omegá.

John blinked with astonishment at his own stupidity. He couldn't believe he'd let his rage blind him to that pertinent truth. He had just won the lottery. As Mary's husband, it didn't matter that he wasn't the pup's biological father, he was still Dean's _legal_ Sire. John Winchester was now the legal Familial Alpha of an Omegá and he knew Omegáres were worth more money than he could even imagine.

But the law was quite specific. 

John understood enough about Beta Law to know that Dean was considered a 'consenting' adult now. John could fuck him himself or rent him out to a City Hall for a couple of years or well, anything he liked really, except actually take him into Pack Lands and sell him directly before he was sixteen. And John clearly remembered the conversation he'd had with Kate Milligan.

A pack paid twice as much for a _virgin_  Omegá.

So John was going to have to wait almost two years for his payday.

That changed things.

John was going to struggle enough with the inconvenience of bringing up Sam on his own without the added burden of dragging the damned Omegá around with him for two years. Besides, despite his complete honesty in saying he wasn't particularly interested in the idea of fucking an Omegá, even one as pretty as he now was willing to acknowledge Dean to be, John was realistic enough to accept there were going to be a lot of long, cold lonely nights over the next two years and it wouldn't take him more than a drink or two to overcome his aversion to the idea and take a quick paddle in the Omegá's deliciously smelling pool.

"Who knows?" he demanded calmly.

Mary blinked at him in puzzled astonishment at the dramatic change in her husband's tone and body language.

"No one," she told him, cautiously. "It doesn't seem that Betas can tell and there aren't any other Alphas in Lawrence."

John nodded thoughtfully, contemplating the situation before making a decision. He still had every intention of snapping Mary's cheating, lying neck but...well...there was no reason to be hasty about it.

"I suggest you keep it that way. Dress him as a Beta. Don't allow anyone to find out and, if they DO find out, call me and make it clear that _I_ am his Familial Alpha and they had damned well better keep their hands to themselves. When he's of age, I'll come back to fetch him and we'll take him directly to the nearest Pack."

Mary gasped a huge, gulping sob of relief.

"I thought...I...I thought..."

"I told you," John said coldly. "I'm not a monster. It's not the pup's fault you couldn't keep your legs shut."  He turned his attention to the wounded Omegá, seeing the dark bruises forming around Dean's neck and he was actually truthful when he said, "I regret hurting you, pup. It won't happen again." And if his genuine regret was that he might have damaged a valuable piece of merchandise, well, that was _his_  secret to keep.

 

 

 

 


	31. Chapter Twenty Eight

As the Primá of the largest Pack in South Dakota, Ophriel had established his Pack Hall just outside Pierre and then had increased his influence until he had considered himself, for all intents and purposes, the Grandé Alpha Primá of his state for over sixty of his ninety four years.

That is not to say he had never acknowledged Cain being _The_ Grandé Alpha Primá of all the American States but, over those six decades, Ophriel had never had reason to give much consideration to the fact he was effectively only a General, rather than a power in his own right.

He had been less than impressed, consequently, by the news he had fallen under the authority of Cain's nineteen year old pup, Castiel.

Ophriel had been surprised by Cain's decision to divide the States but not fundamentally opposed to the idea. He could see the logistical advantages of the division and the Midwest was such a vast region that he had little expectation that his new Grandé Alpha Primá would have the time or inclination to interfere directly in local Pack issues. So Ophriel hadn't particularly minded the idea having his allegiance moved, just that it had been given to some wet behind the ears pup. What really galled him was the idea of ostensibly taking orders from someone younger than his own grandpups.

Fortunately, Primáres didn't pledge their allegiance to the Grandé in the same manner as Alphas did, so at least Ophriel hadn't faced that particular indignity.

His Omegá bride and mother of his seventeen pups, Daniel, had been remarkably unsympathetic to his concerns.

"Only the very young are still naive enough to believe change is possible," Daniel had said. "If anyone is ever going to shake the foundations of the Packs enough to enforce change, it won't be someone like you or I, Ophriel. We both see the faults in the world but we've grown too tired and cynical to even bother challenging the things we know are wrong. Perhaps some naive idealism is exactly what is needed in our new Grandé. Perhaps the fact he is young will enable him to actually make a difference."

The memory of that conversation reverberated in Ophriel's head as he and Daniel arrived at the Detroit Pack Hall to answer the summons of the new pretender.

Although he was feeling a level of irritation at having had his immediate attendance demanded so imperiously, conversely he also took an almost instinctual pleasure in the fact Castiel had acted with such apparent arrogance. One never appreciated the idea they might be bound in allegiance to a weak leader. Though he had yet to actually meet and take the measure of the nineteen year old Castiel, Ophriel already felt a grudging level of respect that after only three months in the position of Grandé Alpha Primá the youngster had gone so far as to call a Pack Conclave.

Doing such a thing took some serious balls.

Ophriel also was impressed by the organisational skills of his Grandé's Pack Hall. A driver had been waiting for them at the airport and they had been whisked off with efficiency to one of a dozen individual pleasant cabins on the Pack Hall's estate. The cabin had been spotlessly clean, with a fully stocked kitchen, a luxurious bathroom, new linens in the bedroom and even a wardrobe full of clothes that a Beta attendant had assured him had been supplied for their comfort on the assumption that their hasty departure had left them unable to pack adequately.

What had impressed Ophriel the most was that all the clothing provided for Daniel had been carefully chosen to accommodate Daniel's preference of wearing sheer diaphanous gowns and, in the comfortable sitting room of the cabin, it was evident from the faint marks on the otherwise pristine carpet that a sofa had been hastily removed and replaced with exactly the model of Omegá seating that Daniel preferred.

Whilst Ophriel was a little disturbed at the evidence that Castiel clearly had extensive files on his Primáres and their Omegáres to be so aware of their personal preferences, he was gratified by the obvious effort that had been made and amazed it had been accomplished in less than six hours. He had little doubt that the same meticulous detail had been applied to the needs of his fellow Primáres in the neighbouring cabins.

"We should make a point of thanking Castiel's BetaWife," Daniel said, as he emerged from the bedroom, freshly showered and draped in a silken translucent blue gown that both covered and yet fully revealed his body. The skirt of the gown was formed from petal-like panels that shifted as he walked, letting hints of bare flesh flash enticingly as the material petals danced and parted with each steps.

Ophriel swallowed heavily at the sight. At eighty six, Daniel was starting to show the first faint signs of middle age but his Omegá's beauty still never failed to arouse him and, somehow, he always found Daniel's habit of wearing teasingly barely-there clothes to be far more provocative than actual nakedness.

Daniel smiled with genuine pleasure at seeing the pegged Omegá seat and immediately sank onto it with sigh of relief, arranging the drapes of his skirt around his lap as he settled himself to wait. Conclaves traditionally began at moonrise so it was unlikely they would be summoned to attend for several more hours.

As always seemed to be the case in emergency situations, intense haste to arrange the 'troops' was also inevitably interspersed with interminable periods of idle boredom. But satisfied that his adored Omegá was comfortable and happy, Ophriel's irritation at the delay was minor.

~

"You've done well," Chuck said, offering her a reassuring smile of approval.

Meg grinned with relief, pushing a loose strand of hair away from her sweaty face and tucking it behind her ear. She hated greeting her husband's mother whilst looking like something the cat dragged in but she hadn't even had time to take a piss since Victor had announced Castiel's intention to hold the Conclave.

"It seemed impossible to achieve in a single day," she admitted, "but except for the Ohioan minister everyone's here and settled and his plane lands in less than an hour so all I still need to arrange is the seating for the Court. I say 'all' but I'm completely lost," she admitted ruefully. "With so many different levels of hierarchy, how do I possibly not end up offending someone?"

Since Cain was with Castiel and Crowley, the three of them planning the proposed trial in intricate detail to ensure not one single loop hole remained unaddressed, Chuck had nothing to do except aid Meg and was happy to offer his assistance. He looked at her various attempts to scratch out a plan, reached for a pen and paper and quickly drew out a different proposed seating plan with sure, deft strokes.

"See?" Chuck said, showing her the paper. "The meeting hall here is large enough to lay out the trial in a rough oblong, with the Primáres seated in a horseshoe, so none are elevated above another. Then you top the circle by seating the Omegáres together, instead of alongside their mates, thus addressing the necessity to acknowledge our higher status. You leave a space either side, between the Omegáres and Primáres, so that witnesses walk into the centre of the circle from the top right and exit to the top left. I doubt you're aware of this, being Free Born, but the central flooring of all Pack Halls can be drawn backwards to reveal an excavated pit. You need to arrange the circle so that both gaps will allow for the steps on either side of the pit, even though the mechanism to open the floor will not be deployed until the actual Trial portion of the Conclave begins."

"So the trials take place inside the pit with the Primáres and Omegáres looking down on the proceedings?" Meg asked, able now to visualise it. "What about Claire?"

"You seat Claire on a raised platform directly behind the other Omegáres so she is centre stage in an elevated position both separate from the proceedings and yet marked as highest of all because it is her honor we seek to restore tonight."

Meg frowned at the drawing. "So where do I seat the Beta lawyers?"

"You don't," Chuck said. "This isn't a Beta Courtroom, it's a Conclave. If any of the guilty choose to bring lawyers, they enter and exit the pit with their clients."

Meg laughed nervously. "It's a good thing you're here. If I'd followed my original seating plan, half the Pack would have fallen into the pit when the floor opened."

Chuck chuckled wickedly. "There was a Primá once, Gadreel, who accidentally activated the pit mechanism during a normal Pack meeting and a dozen other Primáres, including the Grandé, did indeed fall inside. Thankfully none were too seriously hurt, the pits are rarely deeper than eight feet, but there were a few broken bones and a lot of hurt prides."

Meg giggled at the mental image. "I imagine everyone was pretty pissed with Gadreel."

"So much so that after everyone finally climbed out, they threw him in the pit and closed the floor over him."

"They killed him for a mistake?"

Chuck shook his head. "I believe they just left him there for a couple of days and then let him out. Still, it's a much tried and tested method of executing people who haven't transgressed enough to deserve a more painful demise. When the pit opens tonight, don't be surprised if its floor is littered with skeletal remains. The bones tend to be left in place to focus the attention of those on trial."

"Wow," Meg breathed. "The Packs seem so ... civilised on the surface but that's some pretty hardcore brutality."

Chuck shrugged. "Scratch the surface of any apparently 'civilised' society and it doesn't take much to reveal a darker underbelly. The difference between the Packs and the Free Betas is that we are unashamed of revealing our inner natures. Pack Law is brutal, Meg, but it is an honest brutality enforced for the genuine welfare of all. Think of a Grandé Alpha Primá as a surgeon, who sometimes needs to wield a sharp scalpel to cut disease out of his Packs, if it makes you feel better."

Meg smirked evilly. "You misunderstand me, Chuck. I don't have any problem with what will happen here tonight. I can't wait to see CP go Primá on their fucked-up asses. I met Claire a couple of hours ago when Benny returned with her. Trust me, I will happily wield the blade myself if the opportunity presents itself."

"Poor pup," Chuck sighed. "There's only one possible merciful solution for her and I am not looking forward to convincing Castiel of what must be done."

Meg gulped heavily and blinked furiously to prevent the embarrassment of tears. She was horrified and yet unsurprised by Chuck's words as she had reached the same terrible conclusion and her failure to see an alternative was heartbreaking.

"Don't dwell on it," Chuck suggested kindly. "I suspect you'll find the solution I'll propose somewhat less ... drastic ... than you're imagining."

He refused to be drawn further, leaving Meg both relieved and frustrated, and instead returned to the more imperative issue of organising the seating.

"We need twelve seats for the lesser Primáres. Set those together in a curve, then seat Cain and Castiel either side at the top of the horseshoe. Put Castiel on the right, so the guilty pass right past him as they descend into the pit and they see who it is who will pass judgement over them. Place Cain on the left, so they pass by or under him as they are led out so that they understand that the justice will be done in his name.

"You'll see when the pit opens that there are two exits on the left. There are stairs out of the pit and there is a tunnel under where Cain will be seated. The guilty will either have justice served in the pit or will be escorted through the tunnel into holding cells. Only lawyers or one who proves themselves innocent will exit via the steps."

"That's why you keep calling them the 'guilty'," Meg blurted in sudden understanding. "Pack Trials begin with the presumption of guilt. It's up to the defendants to prove their innocence, not Castiel's to prove their guilt. I honestly can't understand why the Betas have agreed to it."

"Primarily for the same reason the Betas do everything. Economics. Beta trials can sometimes take weeks or months and consequently cost a fortune. Pack justice is immediate. It is rare for another sun to rise before judgement has been passed and justice delivered. There is no time for clever legal arguments or sifting of evidence. In this case the Betas believe they can produce enough pre-prepared documentation to fool the Conclave into accepting they have acted lawfully. There is no time to individually disprove all the piles of spurious paperwork they will undoubtedly produce. So they believe they can settle this swiftly and extremely cheaply by agreeing to our terms."

"Let me be sure I understand. By agreeing to Pack Law for the trial they are signing away any ability for the Beta Government to object to whatever justice the Pack chooses to dispense?"

Chuck smiled with satisfaction. "We can do anything," he agreed. "And none can object or hold us accountable for our decisions afterwards."

"Good," Meg purred.

"I trust you are already aware of the individual seating preferences of the eight Omegáres in attendance?"

Meg nodded. "Five of them prefer pegged Omegá seating and three, including yourself, prefer non-pegged Omegá seating. For the five with a preference for pegged seating I have conferred directly with the stewards of their Pack Halls to ensure the pegs are exactly the correct size. I have also equipped their cabins with the same."

"Perfect," Chuck said, approvingly. "It's critical that Castiel gains the full support of his Primáres and the most effective way for him to do so is by offering thoughtful attention to their Brides' needs and desires."

Meg chewed uncertainly on her lower lip, then hesitantly said, "I have a question but I don't wish to offend you."

"Questions don't offend, pup. Answers may not always be given but curiosity in itself cannot be offensive. You may freely ask whatever you wish, just as I may freely choose to answer or not."

"Okay, then feel free not to answer but what's the deal with the seating? I always assumed the idea was a modern Free Beta thing and that the younger Omegáres used it because the Betas had created the need in them for that particular...um... constant feeling of ... satisfaction. But Daniel is over eighty, so he can't have learned the habit from the current Beta society."

"Daniel is actually one of the very few Pack born Omegáres," Chuck corrected, confounding Meg even further. He chuckled at her confusion. "Like in so many other things, the Beta version of Omegá seating is just a bastardised perversion of an ancient tradition. Omegáres naturally feel the desire to keep that part of their flower filled. Even a virgin Omegá feels a constant aching hunger inside their empty womb. We are biologically designed to crave impregnation from the first moment of our presentation. It's that desire to conceive that is so easily turned into a weapon against us.

"Omegáres have used pegs to fill their birthing channels since the dawn of history, Meg. It's impossible to describe to another designation how it feels to be filled in that way but it's like being hugged from the inside. It is a feeling of complete comforting satisfaction. In many ancient packs the traditional Omegáres chose to be 'bridled', which was a device they wore that filled both passages and was only removed during the Omadonna Ceremonies. Sadly it fell out of use with the lapsing of the ceremonies because modern sensibilities perceived it to be a form of Chasity device as it simultaneously prevented penetration by Primáres and Alphas alike. But it was forgotten that it was always the Omegá 's choice to wear it, not something imposed upon them. A bridle was worn on the body, filled both passages and caused constant intense pleasure whether the Omegá was seated, walking or standing.

"The Betas have perverted Omegá seating, creating bizarre contraptions that hold an Omegá vaginally pegged to ensure their entire Flores is wide open and yet are shaped to allow an Alpha to easily enter them from behind. Within the Packs, the seating simply incorporates a peg into a normal comfortable chair. Using a pegged seat allows an Omegá to concentrate upon what is happening around them instead of being distracted by their own biological needs," Chuck explained. "Besides, it feels really good," he added with a wink.

"But you don't use one," Meg pointed out.

Chuck grinned unrepentantly, giving a little bounce on his seat and sighing with pleasure. "That, little pup, is because I am 'dressed' in a fully traditional manner."

Meg stared at the Omegá's ordinary shirt and pants in puzzlement for a moment, unable to comprehend his meaning, then understanding dawned and she flushed bright red.

"TMI!" she muttered, flushing even darker.

Chuck laughed unrepentantly. "If you're embarrassed by that, just wait until you see how I and the other Omegáres dress for the Conclave so that we may receive the honor of the Primáres."

~

As was tradition, the Conclave formally opened when the moon first rose in the evening sky, but its opening was unhurried and formal, with the Omegáres arriving first in a slow elegant procession. Their arrival sent low gasps of pleasure through the Alphas and Betas who held sufficient rank to be included in the gathering.

The area allocated to the Betas was at the rear of the hall and even Meg, as highest Beta of all in Castiel's pack, was seated at a distance from the main proceedings but by a clever design the hall rose into a gallery at the rear, with rising rows of seating, so it was almost as though the lesser pack members were an audience attending a play.

So the procession of Omegáres had the anticipatory drama of actors placing themselves onto a stage, their ethereal beauty casting an odd sense of disparity with the otherwise grim setting, and, as Chuck had warned her, irregardless of their normal different choices of clothing (or the usual choice of wearing nothing at all by Gadiel's bride, Ryan) the eight Omegáres were dressed in traditional silken floor length robes that hung like cloaks, leaving their fronts naked and exposed to view. They wore no other clothing or adornments, except for a fine chain around the waists of the three Omegáres, including Chuck, who had refused pegged seating, that Meg now could identify as being part of the mechanism that held their 'bridles' in place.

Whether they seated themselves on pegs or not, all proudly enthroned themselves on v-shaped Omegá seats that held their knees wide apart and thrust their pubic mounds forwards, completely bare and exposed to all eyes.

The view of their most private anatomy was exotic and primally sexual and yet, somehow, filled the viewers with humbled awe rather than lust. In that moment Meg truly understood the difference effected by the fact the Pack viewed Omegáres as Holy. In this formal ceremonial setting, the Omegáres nakedness was a demand for worship, not a carnal invitation.

In a Conclave, she realised, to show nakedness was to unashamedly display power.

It was probably just as well she reached that conclusion right then, since the huge external doors opened to reveal fourteen Primáres who were all as naked as the day they were born.

Cain entered first, his heavy ball sac and pendulous cock thrust like weapons from his hips as he strode confidently into the room. Even Meg, accustomed to seeing Castiel, was shocked by the generosity of Cain's genitals. Around and behind her, Betas who had never before seen a Primá au naturel gave audible gasps of surprise.

Without any acknowledgement of his audience, Cain walked to the first seated Omegá, Daniel, and positioned himself between Daniel's open knees. Then, with an elegance that seemed improbable for such a huge man, Cain sank to his knees before the seated Omegá and slowly, reverently, leaned forward to press his lips into a chaste kiss against Daniel's pubic mound. He stayed there, breathing against Daniel's flesh for a brief moment and then, in a gesture of benediction, Daniel raised his right hand and placed it on Cain's head in acceptance of his worship. Cain raised himself to his feet, stepped back with his head lowered in obeisance , then moved to the next Omegá and repeated the process. It was only when he finally reached the eighth Omegá, Chuck, that the ritual changed slightly as Cain kissed his Bride's public mound but failed to achieve permission to rise until he had also pressed his mouth against Chuck's tiny penis and nuzzled it gently with his lips.

When Chuck finally rewarded him with a hand tap of approval, Cain then rose to his feet, walked backwards several feet and knelt in front of the Omegáres, his knees spread as wide as theirs to expose himself to them in a mirror of their positioning.

One by one, the others repeated Cain's actions until a row of kneeling Primáres paid homage at the feet of the seated Omegáres and the sight made the breath catch in Meg's throat as she finally witnessed with her own eyes the absolute reality of how Packs truly believed in the religion they followed. This was not the rote, fakery of Beta religious practices. This was the enacting of genuine, raw, primal belief and she understood now why the Packs spoke of worshipping at an Omegá 's altar.

It was only when several minutes passed without the Primáres moving from their position of worship beneath the seated Omegáres that Meg realised from the whispers of those few Betas seated near her who had attended a Conclave previously, that it was highly unusual for the Primáres to kneel in obeisance for so long. But when the door opened for a third time, now for Claire to make her entrance, Meg understood that the Primáres were making a deliberate point.

Meg had met the fragile Omegá earlier for long enough to be reasonably certain that insufficient sanity remained in the poor pup to appreciate the gesture of the Primáres but Meg and the other gathered witnesses saw if for what it was; an assurance that regardless of Claire's previous experiences, in a Pack she was seen not as an object to be abused but as a near-goddess to be worshipped and that all in a Pack knelt to Omegáres.

It was only after Claire had been helped to her seat by two attentive Beta ladies that the Primáres rose to their feet and all except Castiel took their seats.

Then Castiel, as Grandé Alpha Primá addressed the gathered Pack.

"I have called this Conclave to address the grievous wrongs suffered by the Omegá Claire by those into whose care the All-Father entrusted her. What Claire has suffered should horrify all of us simply because it was harm done by adults to a helpless pup and, yes, we take issue that any human being should bring such harm on another human being. That alone is sufficient reason for wrathful punishment.

"However, whilst man may take issue with another man's deeds and cast judgement against him simply on the basis of humanity, the abuse of Claire was more than an offence against a pup. It was an offence against an Omegá. It was abuse against a physical embodiment of the Omadonna. These are not simply evils done unto a pup, these are offences against God himself.

"The All-Father created Omegáres in the image of his beloved Omadonna. He set them apart from and above us all. We forget sometimes, because they live amongst us and grace us with their daily presence and even allow some lucky few of us to call them mother or wife that they are HOLY. They are born without sin. They are answerable to no mere mortal for their words or actions. Their presence amongst us is a blessing from the All-Father himself and when any mere human of any designation is allowed to raise as much as a finger against them they damn not only their own soul to hell for all eternity but they stain we too of the Packs for allowing it to happen.

"So I call you all today to witness that in the land owned and governed by the Packs of the MidWestern States this will no longer be tolerated. I will draw a line in the sand today that the Betas will cross only at the cost of their own lives. In our twelve states we will start the movement to return the Omadonna to the worship of all designations whether they call themselves 'Free' or not.

"Because, I tell you all now, there is no one 'Free' of the All-Father's judgement and we will be his sword of retribution.

"There is a reason my father set up Cain-Crowley here, why he divided the states and charged me to learn the intricacies of Beta Law. For years the Free Betas have used their wiles and intelligence against us, hobbling us with their clever twisting of Pack Law into their own bastardised version to turn it into a weapon against us. But from today we will turn their own weapon back on them. We will remind them that we too have Laws and our Laws are absolute and merciless. Our laws were written by the All-Father himself and cannot be set aside by mere mortals.

"Today we take the first step towards reclaiming the supremacy of Pack Law."

Castiel stood there, chest heaving, eyes lit with preternatural blue fire, glorious in his naked power.

And, one by one, each of his Primáres rose from their seats and knelt before him, as proud and humble as they had knelt before the Omegáres, and the oldest, most powerful of them, Ophriel, gravely intoned;

"Let it be so."

And so, it began.

~

The first of the guilty were brought to the entrance of the Pack Hall, flanked on either side by grim-faced Second Alphas.

As Sally and David Rogers stood in the doorway, peering with disbelief at the circle of naked Primáres and Omegáres that formed the Conclave, stunned by the completely alien vision of primal savagery rather than the Beta-type courtroom they had expected, it was only the sharp-toothed sneers and heavy, rippling muscles of their guards that prevented the Rogers from turning tail and fleeing.

Both flinched as a gong sounded loudly in the otherwise silent room and then, with the grinding whine of mechanical pulleys rather than the whisper of electronics, the floor in the centre of the Conclave drew backwards to reveal a dark pit .

As the two Alphas pushed them forwards towards a set of stone steps descending into the darkness, torches flared to life around the edges of the pit, illuminating its interior to reveal a dirt floor littered with undeniably human bones.

Sally screamed loudly, her eyes widening in terror. "I'm not going down there. You can't make me go down there. Tell them, Dave. Tell them they can't make us."

In the pit below, a door opened to reveal a tunnel entrance next to the opposite staircase. Light flared deep inside the tunnel and then brightened further as it moved towards the pit. A moment later, the source of the light became visible as a burning brazier was pushed out of the tunnel entrance onto the floor of the pit by First Alpha Victor. Victor positioned the brazier to the side of the pit next to a large stone table, added some fresh coals to its heat from a bucket hanging from its side, then walked to the staircase and positioned himself on the third step up in a clear message that none would exit the pit via those steps without his consent.

First Alpha Crowley emerged from the tunnel pushing a trolley on which there were an array of metallic objects, some of which were clearly knives and pokers. With the calm efficiency and cheer of a doctor prepping for surgery, he was whistling as he began to lay certain choice items out upon the table, positioning knives in order of length.

Sally Rogers screamed again.

Her husband, now equally alarmed, tried to turn back towards the door but the Alpha escorting him caught him easily by the scruff of the neck and marched him to the top of the staircase.

"You can't do this," he protested as he and his wife were shoved downwards, forced by gravity and momentum to either walk down the steps or simply fall down them. They stumbled to the bottom and turned immediately to flee, only to find that First Alpha Benny had stepped out of the shadows and was now positioned behind them, preventing any effort to return the way they had come.

"You requested a trial," a voice stated from above the pit, and David looked up and flinched to see that three sides of the pit were lined by fourteen huge naked men with genitals larger than prize bulls and eyes that blazed with the blue fire of an artic winter.

Alpha Primáres, he realised, though nothing in his nightmares had prepared him for the reality of them in the flesh.

The one who had spoken was visibly the youngest of them, but his voice cracked like a cold whip around the hall. "You demanded a trial that you could reap a reward for the care of your pup, Claire. Here, in this place, the reward you deserve will be granted to you."

"Now look here," David blustered. "We're good god-fearing people and we want no part in your beastly rituals. I should have known better than to expect proper justice from....from animals like Alphas."

Instead of a reply, the Hall filled with the tape of the conversation recorded earlier with Meg.

Sally and David paled dramatically as they heard their own words repeated back to them and they heard the rising growls from the pack members seated in the gallery.

There was a flash of gold light from the right of the pit and they looked up to see the eyes of the eight seated Omegáres blazing with gold.

The youngest Primá spoke.

"You are judged guilty. Sentence will be passed."

"You can't do this, what about our defence? This is bullshit," David protested.

"David Rogers, you wish that sub-human creatures should be castrated. This court finds you to be subhuman and grants you this wish."

David made a panicked break for the stairs but was caught immediately by a smirking Benny who picked him up, one-handed and carried him towards the stone table. Then with his other hand Benny ripped at David's clothes, rending them easily with his Alpha strength to reveal David's flabby pale body, small Beta cock and rapidly shrinking testicles.

Still whistling cheerfully, Crowley chose a blade, took a look at David, scoffed rudely, put the blade back and chose a smaller one.

Ignoring Sally's hysterical screams and David's howls of protest, Crowley heated the blade until it was white hot, then swiftly sliced it across David's scrotum, the blade cauterising the wound even as it removed the flesh. David screamed in agony and slipped to his knees, clutching at his groin, his eyes staring in disbelief at his own balls lying like discarded offal on the floor.

Crowley looked up at the Primáres surrounding the pit. "Cock too?" He questioned cheerfully.

All fourteen nodded dispassionately.

Crowley chose a new blade, heated it, and dragging the whimpering Beta to his feet, sliced his penis off, then pressed the side of the blade against the wound to seal it, letting the pit fill with the stench of burning flesh before he dropped the now unconscious man to the floor.

"Sally Rogers, you find it an amusement for a human being to be kept as a pet, deprived of any hope of dignity," Castiel intoned. "Your own pup sits here mute, mutilated and insane from your direct cruelty and that which you allowed others to perform upon her. You are owed the same fate."

He turned his attention to Crowley. "Take them to the holding cells and remove her tongue, her eyes, her hands and her feet. Do the same to her husband. If they survive, drive them out of the Packlands and leave them at a Beta animal shelter. Perhaps someone would like to keep _them_ as pets."

The cold blaze of blue in his eyes intensified as Sally's hysterical screaming rose in pitch. "Start with the tongue," he suggested dryly.

Then he turned to the Second Alphas stationed at the door.

"Well that's the easy ones dealt with.  Bring the next guilty party in for their Trial."


	32. Chapter Twenty Nine

Sam Winchester, at thirteen years old, was not a particularly happy pup.

He felt the blame for a large proportion of that unhappinesss could be lain at his older brother’s door.

It wasn’t that Dean was a bad brother. Unlike an average older sibling, Dean was not bullying or overbearing or even disinterested. Quite the opposite. Dean was absolutely, hands-down, the best older brother a pup could have.

During their whole lives, Dean had unfailingly been Sam’s champion in all things. Dean’s defence and protection had been stalwart certainties in Sam’s life. He had never met a person, or situation, that he hadn’t known he could face in the absolute knowledge that his big brother would swoop in to save him if necessary.

One would imagine Sam would be grateful for having such a brother and, perhaps, before the onset of puberty such a supposition would have been correct. But with the onset of the physical changes and hormonal imbalances that his early teen years wrought, Sam found himself increasingly irritated and, frequently, incensed that he was living in the shadow of a character such as Dean.

Perhaps any pup would have felt the same to some degree. During the uncertainties of approaching adulthood, all pups suffered periods of angst and self-doubt. Having an older sibling who appeared such a paragon would surely have made any pup resentful of their own perceived shortcomings.

But Sam was struggling perhaps more than most. For over two years he’d been feeling the increasing onslaught of particularly unpredictable tempers. The same thing that one day barely pinged his radar, the next day would be perceived as being of earth-shattering significance. A lost sock or a spilled drink laughed off on a normal day as insignificant would, if it occurred on one of his ‘dark’ days, send him into a rage.

Sam was not proud of himself for his behaviour on his ‘dark’ days, when his sometimes vicious temper tantrums would bring looks of hurt to both Dean and his mother. Naturally, his shame at losing control like that would increase his personal feelings of worthlessness and that just furthered his spiral downwards into general, sulking dissatisfaction with his life even on his ‘better’ days.

And all the while he was feeling the dark, heavy cloud of a depression that never seemed to lift and was instead only broken occasionally by flashes of white-hot rage, the shame of which just then further increased his depression, Sam was living with an older brother who simply never seemed to put a foot wrong.

Dean had a sunny disposition that allowed him to face every situation with either a smile or a careless shrug. Dean never snapped at their mother or stormed off in anger over something as stupid as a misplaced shoe. Dean was charming and good-looking and popular. Everyone liked Dean more than Sam. Pops thought the sun shone out of Dean’s ass, even though it was Sam who bothered to attend his stupid sermons. Dad, on the rare occasions he paid any attention at all, was all hot for the idea of Dean following in his footsteps and being a stupid bounty hunter. Dad had never suggested that Sam might want to join the family business too. Not that he wanted to, obviously, but the point was that Dad had never even asked him. Even Mom preferred Dean. Sam knew this, although she denied it, because he saw the way his mom was always watching Dean like a protective mother-hen even though it was obvious to everyone that Dean didn’t need anyone’s protection.

It wasn’t fair, any of it, and it was Dean’s fault.

Sam had suspected it for a while but he now _knew_ it was true because, after his mom drove off with Dean and left him in that god-awful campsite with his father, after a couple of days of awkwardness, he and Dad had actually connected for the first time ever.

Without golden-pup Dean there to overshadow him, his Dad had finally _seen_ Sam and it had been good. It had been _great_.

Which was possibly why, when he heard the commotion in the hall and opened his bedroom door to see his Sire throttling Dean, he hadn’t immediately charged to his brother's aid. Instead, he’d simply stood in the doorway, frozen in indecision, not even moving when his mother had leapt to Dean’s defence.

_Of course._

Even as he’d stood there unmoving he’d known that, if the situation were reversed, Dean would have leapt onto their father’s back like a rabid monkey and risked his own life in Sam’s defence. Oddly, instead of that making him ashamed, it firmed his resolve not to act.

 _Of course Dean would play the hero_.

Obviously, he had every intention of getting involved if his Sire looked likely to hurt their mother but, as far as he could see, John was barely paying attention to her at all. And then, somehow Dean had gotten hold of their mother’s gun _(and since when had their mother started carrying a gun?)_ and as the physical attack against Dean turned into a verbal attack on their mother, Sam listened with not a little satisfaction to the totally amazing factoid that, apparently, Dean wasn’t a golden-pup, after all.

Despite his inaction suggesting otherwise, Sam did not _dislike_ his brother. Sam was actually rather fond of him and although he no longer viewed him with the same near-adoration he had done as a small pup, he did _care_ about him. It was possible he even loved him. Sam’s problem with Dean wasn’t with Dean himself but with the way no-one saw _him_ because of Dean.

So he genuinely felt compassion for Dean. Sam couldn’t imagine anything worse than presenting as an abomination like an Omegá. Although he was confused by that revelation because everything he knew about that particular brand of sub-humans was what Pops had preached about in his sermons, and nothing he’d heard had led him to expect an Omegá to be anything like his brother.

Still, it was pretty obvious that no-one was going to prefer Dean over Sam from now on, so Sam nobly decided to concentrate on how much worse poor Dean’s life was going to be instead of immediately imagining the benefits he himself would receive as a result of this bombshell.

When his Sire said he was going to leave and only come back in two years to take Dean away to live in a Pack, Sam naturally assumed that meant he would be going with him. He wasn’t sure how he thought about that. He didn’t imagine life on the road with John Winchester was going to be conducive to his desire for a good education. Neither did he particularly like the idea of living with an Alpha. He usually managed to compartmentalise his feelings for his father as being something completely separate from his feelings for Alphas in general but, faced with the idea of living with one full time, the concept scared him. He didn’t really want to leave his mom or Dean, even if Dean _was_ an abomination.

So when John announced Dean’s designation was to be kept secret then left the house and drove off with a squeal of tyres, leaving without even a ‘goodbye’, Sam might have been expected to be relieved.

Instead, he was furious.

White-hot raging furious.

So furious that had Mary looked up from her frantic examination of Dean’s wounds, she might have seen the faint first flickering glow of banked red fire in Sam’s dark eyes.

~

Mary wasn’t a fool.

She’d seen the spark of greed in John’s eyes as he’d spoken of taking Dean to the Pack Lands. She knew full well that John intended to take Dean and sell him like a prize animal. And, in knowing that, the last of her love for John fizzled and died.

Mary had no intention of ‘selling’ Dean like a piece of property.

When she took Dean to the Pack Lands, she would deliver him in the guise of a Prince returning to claim his birth right, not an item for sale.

Of course, she’d do so with an AK-47 in the trunk of her car, just in case. Although her instincts told her Dean would have greater protections under Pack Law than Beta Law, she wasn’t going to take any chances with his safety. Mary knew John kept an emergency stash of barely-legal weaponry under the floor of their disused Chicken coop. She’d seen him on several occasions as he’d transferred the weapons between a hidden compartment in the trunk of his car to his ‘secret’ store. Clearly she’d have to arrange to have something similar built into her Ford. There were bound to be border guards she’d have to pass to enter into Pack-owned land and she wouldn’t want to take the risk of being disarmed before they reached their destination.

Mary couldn’t imagine John wanting to spend any time in the house when he came back, so he’d be unlikely to turn up before Dean’s actual sixteenth birthday. As long as she and Dean left the house a few days earlier, Mary was sure she could get Dean over the border long before John caught up with her.

All she had to do was keep Dean safely disguised as a Beta until then and, really, she couldn’t see that it would be a problem.

Assuming, of course, the awful bruising and swelling around his throat wasn’t concealing any more serious wounds because no doctor or hospital were coming near her pup short of actual life-threatening injuries.

But Dean had assured her he was okay, with a croaky “I’m fine”, and had waved off any further attention as unnecessary and although Mary suspected Dean was the kind of pup who would declare himself ‘fine’ even if he was bleeding out onto the carpet, her instincts told her that although John had inflicted more grievous wounds than were visible to her eye, those hurts were caused by his words, rather than his hands, and she couldn’t blame Dean for preferring to keep those injuries close to his chest for a while.

Dean had disappeared into his bedroom, presumably for a private cry, and she wouldn’t offend his dignity by following him.

Sam had also retreated to his room with his usual loudly slammed door and, though Mary knew she needed to discuss the situation with him, she decided it might be best to let both pups calm down a little before addressing the issue of Dean’s designation and John’s angry departure.

Truth be told, Mary needed a little time to decompress herself before having that conversation.

~

It wasn’t fair.

Not only had his dad left him behind without a word, as though it made absolutely no difference that Sam was still his actual son, his _only_ son, he’d left orders that Dean was to continue pretending to be a Beta.

So no one was going to know.

Nothing was going to change.

Everyone was still going to think Dean was Mr Perfect and that Sam was just Dean’s loser younger brother. Everyone was still going to prefer Dean. No one was going to know what Dean really was. Not even Pops.

It wasn’t fair.

But, then again, he understood why it might not be good if it was general knowledge. Maybe it was okay if no-one found out that Dean had a teeny weeny.

He giggled at his own joke.

_Deanie’s teeny weeny._

He wondered what it looked like. He couldn’t visualise how his muscular, well-built brother could possibly only have a tiny cock. His own cock had thickened and lengthened over the last few months and, though he still had little interest in touching it yet, he often admired it in the mirror and considered himself unusually well-blessed.

_Poor Deanie and his teeny tiny weeny._

He giggled again, then the smile slipped off his face and he sobered into thoughtful contemplation. And then, in the depths of his eyes, red fire flickered.

It wasn’t fair, he suddenly remembered.

Sam wasn’t letting his Pops be deceived like that. His Pops deserved to know the truth about his ‘favorite’ grandpup.

Decision made, Sam reached for his phone.

~

Archbishop Richard ‘Dick’ Roman of the Kansas City Church of Abel, licked his lower lip and frowned thoughtfully into his monitor. “You are absolutely sure of this?”

“I haven’t seen it for myself yet,” Samuel Campbell replied, via Skype, "but I have it from a very reliable source. I just wanted to confer with you before I head over there.”

Roman rubbed his chin. “You’re sure the Familial Alpha hasn’t filed any paperwork?”

“I’m calling you from the Town Hall,” Campbell confirmed. “Apparently the Alpha’s definitely left town without formally registering his claim.”

“I suggest you move swiftly, then, before he realises his mistake. If you can get the Omegá here before any papers are filed, we could conclude the transaction with the Kansas City Hall and let their lawyers handle any situation that later develops with the Alpha. Our finder’s fee would be non-refundable, regardless."

“It’s a lot of money,” Campbell said. “You’re sure the City will pay that much?”

“A million is nothing. If the Omegá is only fourteen, they can use him for a full four years before he has to be sent to auction. Assume he can treat 50 Alphas a day, that’s going to save them a minimum of $4m in brothel fees even after paying us our commission.”

"And the Church takes a 50% tithe from my fee.”

“You still get a cool half million, Samuel, and it’s not like you don’t want to support the Church’s good works, is it?”

"I don't have a problem splitting the fee. I'm more concerned with getting the creature out of Lawrence as quickly as possible. It's an insidious thing, horribly charming and personable. I've just finished printing copies of all the new tracts based on the Tenth translation. The last thing I need right now is this Omegá using its charms and wiles to convince my followers that our scriptures are wrong. The way I see it, the finder's fee is just a bonus."

"It's a typical problem," Roman agreed. "These cuckoos hide in our midst, deceiving us with their pretty faces, tricking us into raising them like real human pups."

"I confess I have been fooled by it myself for years," Campbell admitted ruefully, "but now the blinders have been removed from my eyes I will ensure it never has the opportunity to deceive anyone else."

"I trust Lawrence has one of the Emergency kits issued by the Department of Public Health?"

Campbell nodded but pursed his lips in concern.  "The pup is large for its age but I still simply can't see how it will be possible to insert that thing. Are you positive it has to be done here rather than in Kansas City?"

Richard Roman frowned. "We can't risk transporting it as anything other than a City owned service Omegá. If there was no Familial Alpha in the picture you could possibly bend the rules a little but, under the circumstances, you need to adhere strictly to the Law. Just follow the written instructions in the kit. Gag it first, so it's totally compliant, then if you spank its buttocks sufficiently it  _will_ relax enough for the insertion of the peg.  I believe there's a color chart in the kit to guide you. I can send someone over to assist you if you prefer."

Campbell shook his head. "That won't be necessary. I will be taking the sheriff and a doctor with me, so everything will be done precisely within the Law."

~

Mary was just considering what to prepare for dinner, figuring it would be best for the three of them to have their conversation on full stomachs but wondering whether Dean would be capable of comfortably swallowing anything for a few days.

She was looking through the cupboards to see what she had in the way of soups when she heard a car pulling up outside.

Her first thought was that John had changed his mind and returned. Heart hammering with panic, she ran to the window but it wasn't John's car in the driveway. It was a police car.

She didn't need to rely on her instincts to know it boded nothing good.

As she watched, Sheriff O'Hare and a short man she had never seen before climbed out of the front seats. Then one of the rear doors opened and a third man stepped out. Her father.

Mary dove for her purse, retrieved her gun, tucked it into the back of the waistband of her jeans and loosened her shirt to cover it. Then she straightened, forced herself into an illusion of calmness and walked to the front door.

"Dad, Sheriff," she said, then looked at the third man and raised an eyebrow in question.

"This is Dr Hodget, he is here to examine Dean," her Sire said, his voice cold and his expression foreboding.

"Oh?" she said, calmly. "I don't recall asking for any medical assistance."

"Let us in, Mary. Don't make this harder than it needs to be."

"This is private property, Dad, and I have no intention of allowing any of you in uninvited so I suggest you turn around and leave."

"That's not going to happen," the Sheriff told her with a sneer. "We're here with the legal authority of the Department of Public Health to collect the Omegá. You can either step out of the way or I'll arrest you for obstruction. Either way, we're coming inside."  He didn't wait for her reply, he just used his bulk to shove her backwards.

Panicked, Mary reached behind herself, clawing for the handle of her gun but, moving surprisingly quickly for such a heavy man, O'Hare grabbed her, twisting her around, catching both her wrists with one hand and snapping cuffs on with the other. Then, with a mocking grin, he reached for her concealed gun, tucked it into his own belt and, hauling her by her shackled arms, he dragged her outside to his car, pushed her roughly into the back seat and locked her inside."Let's get this over with," he said as he returned to the other men.

Campbell stepped inside and called out for Sam. "Where is it?" he demanded, when his grandpup came out of his bedroom to greet him.

Sam blinked at him in genuine confusion. "Where's _what_ , Pops?"

"The Omegá," Campbell growled.

Sam paled dramatically, gulping with panic as his eyes darted between his Grandsire, the sheriff and the stranger. This wasn't what he'd expected when he'd made the phonecall and it was rapidly dawning on him that in giving in to his temper earlier, he'd made a terrible mistake.

"WHERE IS IT?" Campbell roared.

Sam burst into tears, backing away from him in panic. Campbell started to follow him but then turned away as the door opposite slammed open and Dean stepped into the doorway.

"Pops," he croaked, his voice scratchy and barely audible. "I take it you've heard the good news." Then he turned his attention to his crying brother. "Go in your room, Sam. It's okay. Don't be scared. This is nothing to do with you."

Campbell sneered at the _thing_  that had dared to pretend to be his flesh and blood. "Nothing to do with Sam? Who do you think told me what you are?"

Dean literally staggered with shock, glancing with wounded disbelief at his crying brother. "You betrayed me?" 

"I'm sorry," Sam snivelled miserably. "I was mad, Dean. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I didn't know he'd do this. I'm sorry. I just...just wanted him to like me best."

Dean blinked against tears for a moment, then straightened his shoulders and his expression was calm as he looked at his younger brother. "It's okay, Sam. Just go to your room."

"Let's all go down to the sitting room," O'Hare said, when Sam had gone. "We'll do this nice and legal. The doctor needs to examine you. Sign the paperwork and get you squared away."

"Then the doctor can come in my room alone," Dean suggested. "I'm not showing my junk to a room full of perverts."

"To clothe an Omegá is a sin," Campbell sneered. "You might as well take your pants off now in front of all of us because you won't be wearing them when you leave anyway."

"Okay, fine," Dean said, with a casual shrug. "Let's go see what Mom thinks about that."

"Your mother is under arrest," O'Hare sneered. "She's locked in my car."

For a moment Dean's composure was visibly rocked but then he shrugged again. "Fine, you win," he said, heading towards the living room door.  He moved with deliberate casualness, lulling the men into believing he was cowed but, as he reached the  end of the hallway he suddenly darted left, rather than right, racing towards the back door.

He reached the door a few steps ahead of O'Hare but the door was old and had a tendency to stick in its frame. It took a couple of seconds to wrench it open and that brief delay was enough time for O'Hare to grab Dean's shoulder and drag him back into the hallway again.

O'Hare then grabbed him around the back of his neck, his fingers pressing cruelly into flesh already bruised and swollen from John's earlier assault, and half pulled, half dragged him until all four of them were in the sitting room. Then the sheriff held him firmly whilst the doctor unfastened Dean's pants and pulled first them and then his boxers down to reveal his genitals to the gathered men.

"So, it's undeniably true," Campbell growled. 

"How do you want to handle this, minister?" O'Hare asked.

"As the Holy Book advises and Beta Law proscribes," Campbell announced portentously. "It is an Omegá, an abomination that wears the face of the Omadonna but in reality is little more than a beast. My daughter, Mary, has concealed it out of shame for her own whorish ways. Her husband, the Alpha, clearly cannot be its Sire. So there is no Alpha guardian whomhas taken legal responsibility for this abomination and the law will not allow it to be sold to the savages that live in Packs until it is of age.  I therefore will have it immediately transported into the care of Kansas City where they have the facilities for its care. But first we must remove all the clothing that allows it to hide its true nature, as the good book demands."

"We should gag it first," the doctor suggested. "That's what the instructions in the Emergency Kit suggest."

Dean struggled frantically in O'Hare's grip but, although the Beta Sheriff lacked John Winchester's strength, a fourteen year old was no match for a full grown man. To Dean's horror, when the Doctor delved into his large case, drew out a contraption that looked suspiciously like a small plastic dick with straps, and brought it towards his face, O'Hare held him in place by placing him in a headlock with his left arm and then used the fingers of his right hand to pinch Dean's nostrils shut until he had no option except to open his mouth.  When Dean gasped for breath, the doctor thrust the gag into his mouth and pressed it's length down until it seemed to fill Dean's already agonised throat.  But when the end of the gag touched the back of his throat, instead of causing him to gag, he felt his whole body go numb and limp.  Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, Dean lolled in O'Hare's grip, suddenly unable to move his arms or legs at all.

"Wow," the doctor breathed. "It actually works. Talk about compliant. I'd heard about the phenomenon before, but never seen it in action. He's just like a ragdoll. Apparently the effect is only temporary, even if we leave the gag in, but it should be good for about half an hour. Long enough to get him pegged and on his way to the city, anyway."

"Do you want to do it, Minister, or shall I?" O'Hare asked.

Campbell scrunched his nose in distaste. "I know it's an Omegá but it's still Mary's pup. I don't feel comfortable touching it _there,"_ he admitted. "How about me doing the spanking, sheriff and then you can insert the peg?"

The sheriff shrugged indifferently. "Whatever," he agreed amiably.  

Campbell positioned himself on one of the sofas and O'Hare lay Dean's floppy-limbed body over his lap.  Without any warning, Campbell immediately applied a hard blow across Dean's buttocks and Dean gave a muffled yelp of shocked pain. Campbell added another half dozen resounding slaps onto Dean's buttocks then paused and shook out his hand before applying a half dozen more. 

 

"Should it be pink or cherry red?" He asked the doctor, swapping hands and repeating the process, completely uncaring of his grandpup's muffled whimpering, sobbing protests. 

"According to the color chart, for a virgin Omegá it needs to be more of a deep burgundy color," the doctor replied, pulling the peg out of his bag. 

From his upside down position, barely able to breath between the gag in his mouth and the tears and snot dripping down his face, Dean saw the thing the doctor was holding and was sure he would have leapt out of his skin with fright if he was physically capable of moving. The peg was as long and thick as a forearm. There was no way something that size was going to fit in him without ripping his entire insides apart. The terrible, fiery ache in his buttocks suddenly felt irrelevant. Even though the hot burning pain was increasing with each descent of his grandsire's hands, Dean would rather the spanking went on forever than anyone brought that monstrous thing anywhere near him.

 _Please_ , he prayed to any deity that might be listening,   _Please stop this. PLease save me from this. PLease don't let me die like this._

And perhaps some deity was actually listening because the next thing Dean heard was the explosive blast of a shotgun being fired and a crashing sound as half the ceiling rained down.

"Get your fucking hands off my son, you bastard, or the next one takes your head off!"

Dean couldn't move his head to see who had entered but he didn't need to.

He'd know his mother's voice anywhere.

"You," Mary demanded, pointing the gun in her other hand at the doctor. "Take that thing off his face."

The doctor hastened to comply, releasing the straps and pulling the gag out of Dean's mouth. Although its removal didn't have the same immediate effect as its application, Dean regained enough control of his limbs to at least roll himself off Campbell's lap and into a position where he could see his mother as she stood in the middle of the room, her hair and face dusted white with ceiling plaster, a shotgun in one hand and a semi-automatic pistol in the other.

"You okay, pup?" She asked, without taking her eyes off the three men.

"Fine," Dean croaked, through a throat now so sore that more words seemed an impossibility.

"Do you know how much trouble you're in, Mary Winchester?" O'Hare growled. "This is lawful business you're interfering with and an actual officer of the law you are threatening with a weapon."

Mary thought about it. "Golly," she said. "I do seem to have broken a few laws today. So, I'm probably already in some pretty serious shit. Escaping police custody. Discharging a weapon. Threatening a sheriff. Interfering with the legal abuse, attempted rape and proposed sale of my son to be a government approved prostitute. Yep. That sounds like some pretty serious offences. Might as well add a couple more."

Her left hand jerked as she shot the pistol twice. The first bullet took out O'Hare's right kneecap. The second entered Samuel Campbell's forehead and exited with enough force to splatter most of his brain matter onto the far wall.

Mary turned her attention to Dean. "Can you walk?"

He nodded.

"Don't try to get dressed yet. Go get in the car while I finish in here."

She waited for him to hobble slowly out of the room, then turned back to the sheriff.  The doctor was desperately trying to staunch the bleeding from his leg. "I don't need the additional shit that would go with killing _you,"_ she said, conversationally, "but that's the only reason I haven't done it. I've disabled your car and your radio. I've taken the phone line out and I'll be taking your cellphones with me.  I'll be long gone out of the state before you get any chance to raise an alarm. So, if I were you, I'd count myself lucky and let this go. But since I doubt you will, I'm sure I'll get the opportunity to give you what you truly deserve on another day."

~

Sam was waiting by the car, a blanket in his hands which he thrust forward in offering as soon as Dean appeared. His eyes were tear swollen and fearful as he waited for Dean's reaction to seeing him.

Dean silently accepted the blanket and wrapped it around himself.

"I'm sorry," Sam said. "I just get so mad sometimes and I don't know why, but I never meant for you to get hurt."

Dean considered this, then looked at the open door of the police cruiser and raised his eyebrow in question.

Sam nodded eagerly. "I climbed out my bedroom window and came and let Mom out. She'd already managed to get herself out of the handcuffs though," he admitted. "I didn't know dad had a stash of weapons in the chicken shed, but she did. She told me to sneak back in the house and pack some clothes for us and I did, and I got some of your books and stuff too, even though she said only get clothes but I thought I'd...."

And still unable to speak, Dean stopped his brother's nervous rambling by simply wrapping an arm around his shoulders and gesturing that Sam should help him climb into the car.

 


	33. Chapter Thirty

Meg startled as a very familiar older woman slipped into the seat beside her, sat down, reached into an oversized purse, extracted a partly completed babygro and settled to continue her knitting.

"I didn't think you were coming. Chuck didn’t mention you earlier and I didn’t like to ask."

"I've spent most of the day on planes. I had to nip down to Mexico and borrow a few things from Lucifer for your husband," Colette told her, “but at least all the sitting down is proving productive.”

 "Why Lucifer?"

 "Lucifer has quite an extensive collection of useful... implements. Cain was concerned Castiel would have more Guilty in need of correction tonight than this Pack Hall is usually equipped for. What have I missed?”

 “Just Claire’s fucktard parents and most of _that_ is happening in the holding cells,” Meg said, her disappointment obvious.

 “Well, there’s a lot to get through tonight so I suppose a lot of it will have to happen ‘off-stage’ to clear the pit fast enough for the Trials to proceed efficiently." Colette told her. “Besides, the best part of Conclaves is usually the part when the Primáres get their own hands dirty but it won’t be possible this time.”

 “Why not?”

 “Politics,” Colette advised. “Castiel is treading dangerous ground tonight. He’s balancing on an extremely fine line of legality and has to be extremely careful not to slip off it. Although Pack Law is still the dominant legal system in this country, the Free Betas have managed to chip away at it enough with their statutes and laws that an unwary Primá could easily inadvertently trip up and do something illegal. Of course, it wouldn’t change anything happening _here_ but we can’t afford for the Beta Government to call foul after the event.”

 “I’m surprised they are allowing it at all,” Meg confessed.

 “Free Beta society is a democracy. The government can’t legislate against greed and stupidity. If their citizens are idiotic enough to freely choose to go down the path of accepting a trial by Pack, nobody can prevent them doing so.  I admit I had expected the Government to lodge a formal protest when Castiel advised the Beta Senate of his intention this morning but, oddly, all they did was insist on the right to send an observer. So, I suppose, they are just hoping Castiel is young enough to lose his self-control and make the mistake of jumping into the pit himself.”

 “Because the Betas would see that as vengeance, not justice?”

 “Exactly.”

 “They clearly don’t know my husband if they imagine he’d do _anything_ without being in complete control of himself,” Meg stated loyally.

 “Oh, look down there. The man in the dark suit. I suspect he’s the man the senate has sent to ‘observe’,” Colette said, pointing at a tall, pale, skeletally thin Beta who had just arrived at the entrance door.

~

It was Cain who rose from his seat and strode, still magnificently naked, to intercept the visitor.

 “What is your purpose here?” he demanded, his voice a rumbling growl that reverberated through the hall.

 "I’m Lues.  I'm here as a representative of the Beta Government of the United States,” the thin man answered calmly.

 "And your purpose here?" Cain demanded again.

 The Beta pursed his lips thoughtfully, clearly choosing his words carefully, then stated "My orders are simply to sit and witness the proceedings."

 "You understand the possible consequences of interference?"

 "I assure you, I will do nothing today except observe and absorb."

Cain frowned at him suspiciously. In the Conclave, it was literally not possible to lie to a Primá but something still tickled Cain's radar about the tall, thin, black-suited Beta. Still, there was nothing he could actually put his finger on to justify obstructing him further so he stepped back and waved the Government man inside and indicated that he should descend into the pit.

He did so, appearing calm and unruffled as he walked down the steps onto the bone-strewn floor and took a position with his back against one of the walls so that he had a clear view of the proceedings.

Above him, a glint of gold flashed in Chuck’s eyes and he curled his lip in distaste but the Omegá said nothing aloud to challenge the observer and so, after a moment’s hesitation, the proceedings continued.

~

The next Guilty was escorted into the hall; a small, middle-aged Beta woman who, though obviously nervous, seemed more awed than actually frightened by the sight of the Conclave and, though she almost tripped down the steps into the pit because she couldn't take her eyes off the Dias of the Omegáres, it seemed to Meg that her expression was one of wonderment rather than fear.

Colette looked up from her knitting, took in the scene and scrunched her face with slight disappointment. Then she returned her attention to the work on her lap, clearly dismissing the woman's trial as irrelevant and too boring to waste her attention on.

It quickly became evident that she was right. The woman was introduced as Claire's midwife and though she confirmed she had, indeed, immediately advised the Rogers that they had pupped an Omega, it rapidly was established that the midwife had not done so maliciously. In fact, it soon became obvious that the woman had thought it something miraculous and a cause for celebration not despair.

"I couldn't understand why they were so unhappy, when it was like a miracle to me. I never thought I'd ever see such a sight with my own eyes," she admitted. "To be here now, in the presence of so many... well, it's a blessing for me to see the Omadonna so clearly through his living icons, though I sorrow for the cause. And...and if I caused this harm to the goddess, then...then I deserve whatever you do to me, Sir," she said, wringing her hands in genuine distress.

Meg could feel a low prickling in her skin, not unalike tiny ants running over her flesh, that indicated the Primáres had already infused the Hall with the particular pheromones that compelled truth, which meant the woman was _truly_ innocent of any harmful intention. 

Although, under Pack Law, that did not _necessarily_ make any difference to the outcome of a trial.

Pack members could be tried simply for the results of their deeds, regardless of their intentions. An accidental harm could be punished to the same degree as an intentional one. But, still, the Pack could also deign to offer mercy and though she'd never witnessed her husband's brutal application of wrath before his sentence of the Rogers she remained certain he was still capable of compassion even whilst blue Primá essence was blazing from his eyes.

Castiel gazed down on the woman, his face expressionless, for a seemingly endless moment as though his eyes alone were able to read her very soul.  Then the rigidity of his shoulders eased a little and he said, "You are found guilty, but your act was minor. At most you hastened, by a day or two, an inevitable event. Go in peace and dwell on this no more. You are forgiven by this Conclave."

Almost collapsing with relief, the small Beta woman stumbled to the exit stairs and was helped up them by Victor, who took her arm gently and escorted her with an almost gentlemanly care.

"Won’t be many leaving that way,” Colette muttered quietly.

 “Good,” Meg said shortly, though she was privately relieved the mid-wife had been forgiven.

 “Ooh. _This_ is going to be worth watching,” Colette said, putting her knitting to one side as the Alpha Guards escorted a number of smartly dressed Betas into the entrance of the Hall.  Meg recognised them as all the doctors, surgeons and nurses involved in the two mutilations and their smart-suited lawyers.  Two of the men were singled out and marched towards the stairs together.

Meg identified them as the surgeon who had performed Claire’s castration eighteen years earlier and the attorney who had accompanied him to the Packlands from Ohio.

The two men descended into the pit and stood with proud, apparent calmness despite the undoubtedly threatening alien environment. Meg imagined the attorney had thoroughly prepared his client because the grey-haired, suited doctor showed no surprise whatsoever at the naked state of those who sat in judgement over him.

The lawyer produced a thick folder of paperwork and thrust it forward like a weapon.

“Good evening, my name is Randolph Jones, and it is my pleasure to represent Dr Warren Mitchell on this very important case. The defendant stands here falsely accused of medical malpractice and Omegá abuse, very serious crimes. At the concl…”

“SILENCE,” Castiel snarled and the man’s mouth slammed shut. It was clear from the immediate look of panic in his eyes that the Primá had enforced his command with compulsion. “This is not a Beta Trial,” Castiel continued, his voice lowering to conversational level. “Spare us your ‘opening speech’.”

He turned his attention to Dr Mitchell. "You choose to act like a scared pup, using this man, Jones, to act as your voice?" he demanded, with a sneer of mockery.

Mitchell stiffened into a posture of outrage. "I was assured by my Hospital, when I agreed to this fiasco, that I would be allowed the protection of one of their best attorneys."

"If it is your preference to hide behind him, that is your choice," Castiel allowed. He nodded at Benny and the huge Alpha approached Mitchell with a peculiar metal device in his hands. 

"What are you doing? What is that thing?"

"A gag for your mouth," Castiel replied. "At least, it will be used as such on this occasion." 

"You want to put that thing in my mouth?"

Although the odd, smooth pear shaped object did not look _too_ large to fit inside his mouth, it would clearly not be a comfortable fit. Mitchell was evidently horrified by the idea of it being used to silence him.

"I'm surprised your 'best' attorney did not advise you on this matter. Pack Law is firm. The guilty may only speak with _one_ voice. We bow, reluctantly, to the Beta Government's request that we allow the peculiar practice of using legal advocates in a trial setting but if you take that path, and choose to use another to speak on your behalf, then naturally you give up your right to speak with your own voice."

The surgeon glowered angrily at Jones. "Why didn't you tell me about this?"

The attorney shrugged in response. "You agreed you would be silent and let me do the talking," he reminded his client.

"I wasn't expecting to be physically gagged," Mitchell spat.

"You may speak with your own voice if you prefer," Castiel reminded him. "We are perfectly happy to gag your attorney instead."

“So my choice is to represent myself or let that thing be put in my mouth?”

Castiel’s only response was silence. 

“This is bullshit. I’ve changed my mind. I want a Beta Trial.”

Castiel raised an eyebrow at the Lawyer and lifted the compulsion that kept him silent.

“It’s too late,” Jones spat furiously, though his ire was more directed at the Primá than his client. “You signed the papers. This is happening, Mitchell. Just wear the damned gag and let me do my job so we can get out of here.”

“Open wide,” Benny said, pleasantly, looming threateningly over the much smaller Beta doctor. “I don’t want to chip a tooth.”

Trembling with helpless fury, the Doctor opened his mouth as wide as possible and Benny slid the large metal ‘pear’ inside, leaving Mitchell with his cheeks bulging and his mouth trapped in an open position. Then Benny triggered a mechanism on the end of the pear and Mitchell startled with shock, his eyes bulging as the pear seemed to expand inside his mouth to a painful tension.

“Don’t try to touch it,” Benny advised, as he stepped back. “It’s on a spring mechanism. It will open _far_ more if you tamper with it.”

_“How wide?” Meg whispered to Colette, staring down with fascination. Colette put her hands together to form a pear shape, then leaving the heels of her palms together she pushed her fingers out as wide as they could go._

_“Wow,” Meg grinned. “That would do considerably more than ‘chip a tooth’.”_

_“It would take them all out and half his jaw too,” Colette whispered back. “But it isn’t usually inserted in the_ mouth _.”_

_“Owch.”_

_“I brought up a whole packing crate full of them from Mexico,” Colette told her.  “I’m sure you’ll get a chance to see the thing used properly quite a few times before the night is over.”_

As soon as Mitchell had been gagged, Castiel returned his attention to the lawyer. 

“As I am sure you are aware, Pack Law dispenses remedies of justice rather than redemptive punishments.” 

“An eye for an eye,” Jones sneered. “A primitive concept.”

“And, yet, an effective one.”

“My client understands that your remedy would undoubtedly include his own castration,” the attorney continued easily, “but we consider this an irrelevance as we can provide stone-clad evidence that the Omegá in question had a genetic defect that made the unfortunate removal of his male genitalia a life-saving, medically necessary procedure. I have, in my hands, the sworn and signed declarations by several prominent surgeons that they concur with and support Doctor Mitchell’s actions in this matter.”

"Are you fully conversant with Pack Law?" Castiel asked.  

"I am a fully trained and experienced attorney. I understand the differences between Beta Law and its primitive roots. It's irrelevant to me that you presume guilt rather than our more civilised concept of presuming innocence. It makes no difference to the facts of the case. My client has sufficient evidence to prove, conclusively, that he acted purely through medical necessity. I am confident he has no reason to fear this court’s conclusions in this matter," the lawyer sneered pompously. 

Castiel seemed amused rather than irritated by the Beta's bluster.  "I see," he said, "but for the avoidance of doubt, I was specifically referring to your understanding of our stance on imputation and, perhaps more importantly, Pack Law's opinion regarding actus reus being sufficient grounds for guilt without any regard to mens rea."

The lawyer looked momentarily shocked but then gestured a rude dismissal. "You cannot seriously intend to judge my client under the concept of collective responsibility. That's absurd," he laughed. 

"You misunderstand me," Castiel told him pleasantly. "We are sufficiently confident of his individual guilt to proceed regardless of the deeds of the other guilty parties in this matter."

"Then why bring up Pack Law's position on imputation?"

"To be certain you understand the position you are committing yourself to by representing your client in this matter." 

The lawyer continued to look puzzled for a moment, then understanding dawned and his mouth dropped open in shock. "Are you being serious?"

"Deadly," Castiel confirmed.  Then he turned to the Government Observer. "Fair warning has been given," he pointed out. 

Lues simply nodded his agreement to Castiel’s point.

"You're just going to sit there and allow this... this intimidation?" the lawyer demanded incredulously.  

Lues shrugged carelessly. "I'm an observer. I'm observing." 

"No American court accepts the concept of vicarious liability even for fellow defendants, let alone their attorneys," the lawyer protested. 

"No American Beta court, but this is not a Beta Court," Castiel advised. "Pack Law is very firm regarding collective responsibility. Those who aid the guilty, share their guilt. And, of course, also therefore share in any punishment."

"But...but this is America." 

"Yes," Castiel agreed. "We know. After all, we of the Packs _own_ it." 

The lawyer looked at Lues incredulously.

The government man raised an eyebrow and dryly said, "Perhaps in future you will advise your clients to decline the option of Pack justice. Always assuming your client here is as innocent as you claim, otherwise I doubt the opportunity will arise." 

The lawyer swallowed heavily, eyes darting nervously between Castiel, Lues and his client. But then he shook himself like an angry dog. “Very clever, but I stand by the evidence I am holding. I am satisfied that even this court cannot refute it.”

“I have read the contents in your pre-trial submission,” Castiel agreed, “and short of putting all the signatories on trial too, I agree it is difficult to dispute what is written. In fact, without an actual confession by your client I doubt this court could confirm guilt.”

Jones smiled smugly. 

“What’s your most embarrassing secret?” Castiel asked, out of nowhere. 

“When my wife is out I sometimes wear her panties,” Jones replied, then flushed bright red and glared at the Primá in absolute horror.

“So,” Castiel continued. “Now you know, beyond any doubt, that should I ask your client whether or not he is guilty, he will be compelled to answer truthfully. So I ask you one final time, Randolph Jones, are you still positive you wish to represent him in this case?” 

Jones involuntarily pressed a protective hand against his own groin as he absorbed the entire horror of the situation he had allowed himself to become embroiled in and he looked at Castiel with a measure of reluctant gratitude for his unexpected mercy.

"Fuck this," Jones announced to his client. "Defend yourself, you sick bastard. I quit."

He trotted rapidly to the exit staircase and, with a mocking grin, Victor stepped aside and let him scurry past to safety. 

Meg saw a similar flurry of discarded briefs by the entrance hall as every single one of the other waiting attorneys similarly dismissed themselves from the proceedings. And that’s when she understood _exactly_ why Castiel had shown the ‘mercy’ to Jones.

Castiel smiled at the quaking doctor now standing alone in the pit. 

“Remove the gag, Benny. I think the Doctor has something he wishes to say.” 

~ 

“It doesn’t feel like it’s enough,” Meg grumbled, as Crowley castrated the Doctor with quick efficiency.  Although the sight was enough to make the other waiting doctors struggle with their guards (and two of them actually vomited when the smell of burned flesh filled the room) it just didn’t feel like an adequate recompense for Claire’s suffering.

Colette shrugged her agreement. “But it’s within the letter of the Law. All Mitchell actually did was the initial castration, so that’s the only remedy that can _legally_ be applied here and, particularly with a Government observer in place, Castiel cannot _physically_ do more to him. Naturally, he will also levy a fine that will claim all of his worldly possessions and he will insist the Doctor’s license to practice is revoked now he has confessed to medical malpractice so, one way or another, his life is over now even if this court is unable to actually end it. 

“Still,” she continued, “Castiel has a _lot_ more legal leeway with how he can punish the other doctors. They not only muted Claire, they did so specifically and _deliberately_ to make her defenceless against rape. They are all collectively responsible for every occasion she was mounted after the operation.”

“So it’s an eye for an eye and a rape for a rape?” Meg asked.

“Only symbolically,” Colette said. “Sadly, we don’t have enough time to do it _properly_ since all remedies must be administered before sunrise."

~ 

Clearly deciding enough time had been wasted already, as soon as Mitchell had been carried out of the pit, Castiel gestured for the other medics, eight men and two women, to be sent down into the pit together. 

“Let us dispense with the falsehoods and lies,” he said, his eyes blazing with fury. “Speak now only if any of you truly believe you are unfairly accused.” 

Although it was obvious that several of the defendants wanted to speak, judging by the weird, desperate faces they pulled as they struggled against the Primá truth compulsion, only one of them, a woman, actually managed to talk.

“I was the anaesthetist and I argued vehemently against the procedure,” she said, her voice quiet but firm. “My job was threatened when I refused to participate but that is, honestly, not why I capitulated. When I finally realised that no one would listen to my arguments, I was concerned that no one else would take sufficient care of the patient and that is the only reason I participated. I then resigned my role in protest and am currently unemployed as a result. 

“I understand that none of that makes me ‘innocent’ but I do truly believe I am ‘unfairly’ accused. I did the best that I could in a terrible situation.”

Castiel opened his mouth to reply, then hesitated and turned slightly towards his mother. Some silent communication passed between them and he returned his attention to the pit.

“You are guilty by your own admission, but the Omadonna is merciful and accepts you were compelled to act against your will. You may leave the pit,” he told her. “The Pack can always make the choice to accept human frailty as a defence, and does so in your case.”

Then he looked at the other nine Guilty and any trace of understanding fled his features.

“You are convicted by your silence. Remove your clothing then stand there quietly to accept judgement” he told them, his voice reverberating with compulsion.

The nine complied quickly and silently and then stood before him, cowed and shamed, proving to Meg that nakedness did not _always_ display power in a Conclave. 

“Mute them,” he told Crowley.

Despite the visible panic in their faces, none of the guilty were capable of moving or protesting. They could only stand there, helpless, as Crowley took his time to heat his knives and then, one at a time, he cheerfully removed their tongues and cauterised the ragged wounds inside their mouths.  The smell of the burning at least masked that of their bowels voiding in terror and, when he was finished, although at least three of the judged had lost consciousness, still the compulsion kept them standing in place.

With no need to keep guarding the entrance steps, Benny disappeared into the tunnel and emerged carrying a large box. He placed it on the stone table and extracted nine metal pears. He handed them one at a time to Crowley who inserted them, one at a time, between the buttocks of each of the eight male betas until, finally, he inserted a pear into the woman's vagina.

Benny then approached each the nine guilty and fractionally ajusted the spring mechanism so that each of them shuddered with shock.

"Half on the half," Castiel said. "Take them to the cells for now." Then he turned his attention to the Alpha guards at the door. "Fetch the Chicago City Hall officials next."

Meg turned to Colette in confusion. "What does half on the half mean?"

"Half a turn of the pear mechanism every half hour. They need to be considerably dilated before they come back to the pit. Opening the pear gradually usually prevents tearing of the rectum."

"Why care about that?"

"Because no one wants them to die of _infection,_ " Colette said. "That would be far too quick."

~

An hour later, after a total of thirteen more guilty had been led into the cells to join the others with metal pears glinting evilly in their buttocks, Meg turned to Colette and said, "Is it awful for me to say I'm actually getting bored of watching people getting their tongues cut out and their asses plugged?"

"Why do you think I brought my knitting with me?" Colette chuckled. "Seriously, the issue with a trial like this is that all those on trial since Claire reached fourteen are largely all guilty of the same thing so they are all obviously going to suffer the same fate.  Now Castiel only has to try the Ablest Minister and then the pit can be prepared for the final remedy. He's been left until last because his sentence will be passed by the Omegáres rather than the Primáres."

"Why?"

"Because the charge against the Minister is heresy and there is only one remedy for a heretical priest."

Meg's face scrunched with distaste. "Oh, God, please tell me they won't do _that_  in here. The stench will hang around for weeks."

"Fortunately, Cain has a really large personal jet," Colette assured her. "I borrowed the absolute perfect thing off Lucifer.  It's been set up in the front yard of the Hall. Chuck is going to be so pleased with me when he sees it."

"Do tell," Meg asked eagerly.

"Well, instead of just burning a heretic on a pyre as usual which, does, as you say cause the most awful stench and quite a bit of smoke damage, Lucifer's perfected the process. You put the heretic in a metal barrel with just a few air holes, suspend it over a brazier and light the fire. The heretic cooks rather than burns but it still fulfills the All-Father's commandment to execute heretics with fire." 

~

By the time the Conclave reconvened in the Pack Hall, after the last screams from inside the barrel had finally faded to silence, there was barely an hour remaining before sunrise. 

The Pack's Alphas had been busy in their absence.  The pit now contained twenty two narrow stone pyramids, each around four feet high with bases a foot across narrowing to pointed tips.

"I told you it was a big plane," Colette whispered to Meg. "You can't even begin to imagine what each of those things weighs."

The Betas in the cells were brought out, hobbling awkwardly because the pears inside them had been opened so wide over several hours that it was only possible for them to shuffle, so wide-legged that it seemed almost like they were straddling invisible mounts, whilst remaining bent over at the waist with pain. Because they had all had their tongues removed, the only sounds of their obvious suffering were grunts and groans of despair.

Around the edges of the pit, the Primáres all sat in judgement, their eyes blazing with cold, blue fire but, as earlier, only Castiel spoke.

"You have all been found guilty of the abuse, mutilation and exploitation of an Omegá. To satisfy nothing more than your own personal greed you allowed a fellow human being to suffer such sexual abuse that you allowed that victim to be driven literally insane.

"Over the last two hours you have felt for yourselves how it feels to be the helpless recipient of something alien forced inside your bodies. You have felt the same hopelessness, felt the same pain, known how it feels to have agony inflicted by those who care nothing for your suffering, you now know what it is to be considered only an object to be abused at the whim of another.

"You undoubtedly believe your suffering was a punishment, a remedy for your wrongs.

"You are wrong.

"The last two hours have not been punishment. They have been preparation. They have been an undeserved kindness accorded to you by the mercy of this court. A kindness you will appreciate as you are positioned to receive the judgement of this court. Because there is no possible physical remedy devised that can offer any redemption for the evil you have done, it is the opinion of this Conclave that only the All-Father can truly sit in judgement on your souls.

"Therefore, it is the decision of this court that your remedy shall simply be that you are to be impaled as a symbolic rape and then left forever in darkness to seek whatever redemption you may find in the afterlife."

Benny released the spring on the first Beta's pear, retracting the mechanism so he could remove the device from the Beta's well-stretched hole.  He then took hold of the man's left arm, Victor stepped up and took hold of his left and then the two Alphas hoisted the man up and lowered him, slowly and carefully onto the tip of the first pyramid then lowered him, until the first several inches of the stone were embedded deeply inside his rectum. When he was firmly seated, with all his body weight resting on the stone that was impaling him, the two Alphas let go of him, stepped back and moved to the next of the guilty.

It took almost an entire hour to impale all twenty-two, but before the sun began to rise in the sky, the remedy had been completed.

"Of course it will be several days at least before gravity completes the job," Colette advised Meg, packing her knitting away into her purse as the floor of the hall closed slowly over the heads of the impaled Betas. "But since there will be no further physical contact, from a legal point of view the Pack's judgement has been applied within the promised timeframe."

~

"I was surprised by the Government observer," Castiel said, later, as they stood in the yard of the Pack Hall, watching the last flames spluttering under the darkened barrel in which the Ablest minister had died. "I expected him to interfere in the proceedings in some way."

"He kept his word," Cain agreed. "But there was something very unsettling about him.  He bothered me from the moment he arrived."

"Alaistair is a very dangerous man," Chuck said. "I'm not surprised you sensed the wrongness in him but some things are unavoidable. Some things simply have to _be."_

"Alaistair? He said his name was Lues."

“Lues was not his _name_ ,” Chuck advised him. “It was his _purpose._ ” 

~

"It's done," Alaistair said, climbing into the limousine and immediately beginning to peel his suit off. He carefully folded each garment and placed them carefully into plastic bags then sealed them shut and double checked they were air-tight.

 "You're sure?" his companion asked, handing him a replacement suit.

 "There were fourteen Primáres in that room. There were so many pheromone molecules in the air that my woollen suit must be saturated with them. We'll be able to confirm I absorbed enough when we get to the lab."

 "I hope so. I'd hate to think we let this happen for nothing."

 Alaistair shrugged carelessly. "So we lost a few doctors. So what? It's irrelevant in the scheme of things. There's always a few casualties in war."

 

 

 


	34. Chapter Thirty One

Although Mary had not woken that morning with the expectation that before the day was over she would be fleeing Lawrence with a murder charge hanging over her head, she was not as unprepared for the eventuality as one might expect.

She had known, from the moment Dean was born, that a time might come when the ability to relocate at speed might be a necessity. It wasn’t something she had actually _planned._ There was no genius-level strategic masterplan in her head, with intricately plotted details, since in all honesty she hadn’t ever come up with a valid strategy in all the nights she had lain awake considering her options. Despite the sleepless hours she had spent ruminating on the problem, her ‘plan’ still merely consisted of ‘be careful, keep Dean off anyone’s radar for as long as possible and, if Dean presents as an Omegá and anyone finds out, be ready to _run._ ’

But she had at least prepared herself to _flee_.

John wasn’t the only Winchester with a ‘secret’ hiding place on the property.  In Mary’s potting shed, buried deep under the floor, covered by the lawnmower and various gardening implements and a deliberate mess of plant pots and compost bags, there was an ‘emergency escape kit’.

Every month, without fail, Mary disappeared for a few hours into that shed, ostensibly to sow a few seeds and pot a few plants on and if the yard never seemed to benefit particularly from those endeavors it was only assumed by her pups that Mary’s fingers, though keen, were sadly not green.

What Mary actually was doing, every month, was going through her ‘kit’, keeping everything perishable in date, swapping out stored vacuum-packed clothing as her pups grew in size and adding to a growing stack of used, multiple denomination banknotes with a minimum of $100 a month.

Although it wasn’t easy to provide for herself and two strapping pups on a waitress’s wage, she had no rent to pay and the land taxes were paid out of her late Aunt’s estate. She only had to cover bills for services, run the car and buy food (and she wasn’t too proud to thriftily make use of her employer’s offer that staff could take home any unsold cooked food at the end of each workday) so, over the years, she had managed to squirrel away in excess of $10,000. She knew bank withdrawals were traceable and so were the sequential bills usually provided by ATM’s and bank tellers, so she had deliberately stored the money in an air-tight container next to the rest of her supplies.

After adding the contents of her prepared kit to the surprisingly large number of items Sam had managed to collect from the house whilst she had been retrieving John’s weapons and freeing Dean, Mary barely had any room left in the trunk of her car. What little room she _did_ have became home to a couple of extra handguns, a repeat-action shotgun and several boxes of varied ammunition.

And after the car was packed, and two full cans of spare gasoline were wedged into the foot compartment of the backseat, and her pups were safely inside, with Sam riding shotgun and Dean lying down in the back, Mary put her foot to the floor and hared out of town.

However since, despite all of her preparation, she had never actually determined a safe destination to run _to_ ; other than, obviously, getting the hell out of Lawrence, Mary had absolutely no idea of where to go next.

She considered, then dismissed, the idea of phoning John.  Even if she trusted him, which she didn't, she couldn't see that heading in his direction would be any particular improvement on their current situation. He was an itinerant, constantly moving from one town to another, from one seedy motel to another, he had nothing to offer her or the pups in the way of a roof over their heads.

But, of course, the bottom line was that she couldn't trust him. The minute he realised why it had been so easy for her Sire to attempt to take Dean away, he'd inevitably race to the nearest town or city hall and file an Alpha Guardianship claim and any hope Dean had for a 'normal' life would be over anyway. She was also frightened for Sam. Though she was sorely disappointed in her youngest son, and had every intention of telling him so when an appropriate moment occurred, she imagined John's initial response might be far more 'primal'. John had proven himself to have a wicked, violent temper and discovering Sam had disobeyed a direct order would not go down well with him. Mary didn't want two wounded pups.

She wanted to get out of the state as soon as possible and, geographically, Missouri was the closest border. But for initial speed, to get as many miles under her belt as possible before O'Hare managed to get off her property and put out an APB, she wanted to stay on the main roads and if she took the I-70 eastwards, she would have to pass through Kansas City and something, instinct or superstition, told her to stay as far away from Kansas City as possible. So she instead took the I-70 west, vaguely aiming towards Colorado but, when she hit Salina, she saw the sign for the US-81 north to Nebraska and that was when a possibly less-arbitrary destination suddenly occurred to her.

Over the years, Mary had loosely kept in touch with Ellen Harvelle. At first their communications had been formal and a little cold, Mary still struggling to forgive Ellen even despite her understanding of why the other woman had forbidden John from her home but, as the years had passed and Mary's own feelings towards John had changed, she'd found herself increasingly sympathetic towards Ellen's position on the matter and although neither of the two women considered themselves 'friends', they at least had passed occasional cordial emails and had regularly sent birthday cards to each other's pups.

So she knew that Ellen now owned and ran an establishment named the 'Roadhouse', located somewhere between Broken Bow and Loup City. Mary had no illusions that it was somewhere she and the pups could actually stay. Even if Ellen welcomed them, which was doubtful, she had made it clear in her emails that the Roadhouse was a popular meeting place for Bounty Hunters and whilst Mary highly doubted there would even be an APB out on her for at least a couple more days, let alone a reward posted for her capture, it made little sense for a fugitive from justice to go to a place where the professional hunters of fugitives gathered.  Mary also doubted Ellen would thank her when John eventually tracked her down to there because Mary had little illusion that wherever she went John WOULD eventually find her. After all, finding people who wanted to remain hidden from him was what he did for a living.

But, reading between the lines of Ellen's emails, Mary had gathered the impression that Ellen could, or at least _knew_ someone who could, provide them with false identification papers.  If she was going to have any chance at all of keeping herself out of jail and, more importantly, Dean out of the hands of the government, then Mary and the pups couldn't continue to use their own names.

She didn't just change routes in Salina, she also changed license plates.  It had been her intention to see if she could change cars, though all she knew about hotwiring and stealing a car was what she'd seen on tv, but Dean insisted it was easier and safer just to steal some plates. People noticed their cars were missing pretty darned quickly but it often took weeks for people to realise their plates were missing, he told her. Since Dean had spent a lot of time with his Sire, lapping up John's tales of how the fugitives he pursued attempted to evade capture, it made sense to Mary that her oldest pup was somewhat of an authority on the subject.

Of course, most of her 'conversation' with Dean had been necessarily performed by him writing most of his contribution. The additional insult of the gag had left his already bruised throat so sore and inflamed that Mary doubted he'd be able to speak comfortably for days.

Dean was another reason for Mary to keep to the well paved highways. He was in considerable discomfort, though he never uttered (or wrote) any complaints. Mary could only imagine how much worse he would feel if she took the Ford onto more rural roads. She now regretted her choice of buying a saloon, rather than a station wagon. The backseat was just too small for Dean to find a comfortable position lying down and sitting upright was impossible.

When she'd stopped for gas just outside Junction City, she’d taken the opportunity to have a quick check of the harm done to his buttocks and the damage Campbell (because decided she refused to ever even think of him again as her Sire henceforth) had caused with his savage beating had broken Mary's heart. Dean wasn't just red, as one might expect from a 'spanking', he was bruised from just below his waist to mid-thigh. The surface skin was hot and swollen but Campbell had struck him with sufficient violence to darken his buttocks to the blueish black coloration that evidenced deep muscle damage.

And, of course, the same discolouration also covered his neck, shoulders and upper chest as the consequential harm caused by John's violent choking was evidenced by broken capillaries that extended far further than the near black brand of John’s actual handprint that was so clearly etched in Dean's flesh that Mary imagined it might even be possible to take fingerprints from the bruise. Dean's eyes were so bloodshot that they appeared as violently red as those of an Alpha in full fury, and that was an irony that was not lost on her.

But though the visible injuries were enough to make her want to turn the car around and fire a few more bullets into the bastards she had left behind, she was as satisfied as any non-professional medic could be that none were permanent or even, though obviously painful, particularly serious.  What truly concerned her were the non-visible injuries, the inevitable wounding of her pup's spirit and soul.  In the space of a few short hours, her teenage son had received harm from his three closest male relatives. He had been assaulted by his Sire and Grandsire and betrayed by his brother.

Mary was pretty sure that those psychological wounds were going to take far longer to heal than the physical ones.

Which brought her thoughts, inevitably, back to Sam.

Mary loved both her pups equally though she was honest enough to face the fact that it might not always appear so to her youngest. Since the literal first moment of Dean's birth she had been consumed by the need to protect him. She had been constantly vigilant, ceaselessly guarding against any external harm whilst endeavouring to nurture his spirit so that he grew up with sufficient self-confidence and self-worth to face and overcome whatever trials she ultimately would have no ability to protect him from.

She knew, consequently, that Sam, whilst equally loved, had received less of her attention but she'd always believed that what he hadn't received directly from herself by way of affection had been supplied more than adequately by Dean himself, who had always been fiercely protective of his younger sibling. Mary had showered Dean with affection and he had taken that emotion, multiplied it a thousand fold, and almost drowned Sam with a flood of protective love.

But increasingly, over the past couple of years, Sam had changed from a quiet, happy little pup into a moody, sulky and off times downright bitchy teen and though nothing excused what he had done by calling Campbell, Mary was even more furious with herself than she was with him. The fact he had acted so bravely and swiftly the moment he'd understood the magnitude of his error told her that Sam was not a _bad_ pup. He had acted-out, through jealousy and spite but without any deliberate evil intent, so she felt the whole situation was more likely proof that she was a bad _mother_. In concentrating so hard on protecting Dean, she had evidently been guilty of neglecting Sam.

Of course, it didn’t help that Dean was so inarguably easier to love than his younger brother that Sam had felt similarly slighted in all of his interpersonal relationships. Everyone had always preferred Dean, not because there was a _problem_ with Sam but simply because people naturally gravitated more to pups with Dean’s personality type than pups who were quiet and sulky and sometimes, frankly, unpleasant to be around.

Still, Mary had to face her own culpability in the matter because, even though she loved Sam and would just as easily have put a bullet in Campbell’s head to protect _him_ if the situation had warranted, there was no escaping a fundamental truth: if Sam continued to prove himself a danger to Dean, then Mary had every intention of leaving him behind whilst she and Dean continued to flee together.

It wasn’t an _easy_ decision but Mary knew it was the right one.

If Sam didn’t get his act together fast, Mary would be leaving him somewhere safe regardless of how any of them felt about the matter.

And so, that having been said, she thought maybe Sam was perfectly justified in his feelings of jealousy.

~

For a place that was apparently a frequent and popular rest-stop for the hunting community, the Roadhouse proved to be an elusive place to find.

Even stopping and asking for directions didn’t prevent the necessity to backtrack several times before they located it.

Mary was wrung-out and exhausted by the time they pulled into the almost deserted lot late mid-morning. She was running on little more than fumes and adrenaline after thirty hours without sleep.

If Dean had been less injured he could have done some of the driving; he’d had a learners permit for a couple of months and had already proven himself a capable driver but, under the circumstances, he couldn’t even sit upright let alone try to drive a car. Still, Mary had no doubt he would have done his best if she had asked for his assistance. He’d already stunned her with his insistence on getting dressed _properly_ earlier that morning, despite her worry it would be altogether too painful to have any fabric pressing against his buttocks let alone the unforgiving material of his jeans. He’d addressed her concern, with a quick, blunt written note saying that more than enough people had already seen his ‘junk’ in the last 24 hours and he was damned if anyone else was getting the opportunity.

“Stay in the car,” she said. “Let me speak to Ellen first and see if she’s willing to help us.”

Sam nodded, still too subdued to argue, and Dean simply looked grateful he wasn’t going to have to attempt to walk yet.

Ellen Harvelle was cleaning behind the bar when Mary walked in. Because the Roadhouse was closed for business at that time of day, she looked up immediately when she heard the door and it didn't take her many seconds to identify her visitor and stiffen visibly. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously though her expression otherwise remained calm and unruffled.

"Mary Winchester, as I live and breathe."

"Ellen," Mary responded with a nod.

"You look like shit," Ellen announced bluntly. "You here alone?"

"Just me and the pups."

Ellen pursed her lips, her eyes narrowing even further as she pondered. "John following you?"

"Not yet," Mary said.

"You bringing trouble to my door?"

Deciding it was pointless to prevaricate when it was clear Ellen's instincts had already cut through the situation like a knife, Mary said, "Maybe but I've probably got a few days, perhaps a week, before he starts looking."

Ellen nodded, then wiped her hands on her hips. "What do you want, Mary?"

Mary cut to the chase. "Somewhere to stay for a couple of days while I figure things out. Maybe a hookup with someone who could sort me some documents."

"You got money?"

"Some," Mary allowed, cautiously.

"I can maybe hook you up," Ellen agreed, "but it won't be cheap and you can't st...."

"Mom?"

It was more of a pained croak than a word but it was enough to stop Ellen in her tracks.

"I told you to stay in the car, Dean," Mary reminded him as he hobbled painfully into the bar, his shirt open to reveal his blackened throat and chest despite the fact he'd been wearing a t-shirt that concealed most of the bruising when she'd left him just a few minutes earlier.

"Dean?" Ellen asked, looking for the little pup she remembered in the fourteen year old's face.

"Hi, Aunt Ellen," Dean whispered hoarsely.

"Did John do this?" Ellen demanded. "Did that fucking bastard do this?"

Dean's only reply was a sad shrug.

"It was a misunderstanding," Mary began, trying to avoid answering exactly 'why' John had done it.

"I'll misunderstand his fucking ass," Ellen snarled. "Don't you dare try to defend him with your own pup standing there black and blue. Is Sam alright or..."

"He's fine. He's in the car."

"Well don't just stand there. Go get him and your bags. It'll take my guy Ash a few days to sort you out with new papers. You can stay here while he does his thing."

"How much for the papers?" Mary demanded.

Ellen's face twisted as she looked at Dean's throat.

"No charge," she said, gruffly. "Ash needs the practice." She waved her hands impatiently when it looked like Mary might thank her. "Go get Sam and your stuff. Sooner you get started, sooner you'll get out of my hair. Last thing I need is some fucking insane Alpha turning up on my doorstep." 

~

“Here,” Ash said. “Identity cards, social security numbers, a driving license for you, a learner’s permit for Dean, school transcripts for both of them that will hold up to inspection and passports that will hold up to most scrutiny but don’t try using them at _heavy_ security borders.”

“What’s a heavy security border,” Mary asked.

“Oh, I don’t know, just ones like, for instance, International Airports and Pack Land borders,” he said, his words weighted with particular significance on the latter.

Mary stiffened but Ash just gave a careless shrug of one shoulder. “I would have done his passport to say he was sixteen if I could have. He’s tall enough to pass for that age. But the biometric checks on the Beta side at Packland borders are unbelievable. Although the Pack members can pass freely in both directions and the guards barely bother with adults, no teenage citizen gets out of Beta Land without running a gauntlet of checks and, so far, no one has figured out a way to get past those checks with false documents.”

“How did you know?” Mary demanded, worriedly, wondering what had given Dean away.

“Don’t worry. It’s not obvious. Well, except that he’s so damned pretty but even that isn’t _totally_ improbable in a Beta. It’s just that it’s the only explanation that makes sense, given the entire situation, and I’m a genius, Mary. There’s not a lot that skips my attention. But I haven’t said anything to anyone and I won’t. It’s nobody’s business but your own.”

“Ellen doesn’t know?”

“Pretty sure not, since she swears she can see John Winchester in his features and, obviously, that can’t be the case.”

So not a total genius, Mary thought, a little spitefully. Still, she was grateful for his discretion so she just nodded her agreement and looked at the papers.

"Mary, Dean and Sam Smith? Was that the best you could do?"

"In this much time, yes. Besides, it’s best to use a simple, common surname. Prevents anyone even imagining it's worth googling you. And before you ask, yes, I do normally change first names too but not when pups are involved. It's hard enough for an adult to immerse into a totally new identity. I know Dean and Sam aren’t _little_ pups but, trust me, they won’t respond fast enough if people call them by new first names and _that_ will cause suspicion.”

~

“What’s wrong, Mom?” Sam asked, worried by her complete silence in the two hours since they’d left the Roadhouse.

Mary hesitated, then decided to tell the truth since it would become apparent soon enough anyway. “I have absolutely no idea where we should go next,” she admitted.

"We need to go to see Uncle Bobby now," Dean suggested, from the backseat. Although sitting was still proving to be an issue for him, at least he'd regained his voice in the three days they'd stayed at Ellen's. "He will offer us somewhere to stay. It’s time for us to go back to Sioux Falls.”

Mary frowned a little at the odd phrasing of his statement. "Bobby Singer’s an Alpha," she reminded him. "The chances are too high that he'll be able to scent your designation. Besides, for all we know, he might still know how to call your Sire. Bobby runs a hunter helpline, remember. He probably has John on speed dial. We can’t trust him.”

"We _can_ trust Bobby Singer," Dean insisted.

Mary sighed at his persistence and looked up to meet his eyes in the rear mirror.

She gasped audibly. As a Free Born Beta, Mary wasn't particularly superstitious but when she saw the low, golden glow emanating from her oldest son's eyes she didn't even try to convince herself it was just a trick of the light.

"What's wrong, Mom?" Sam asked, again.

"Nothing, baby. I just realised we're going in the completely wrong direction. Sioux Falls is the other way."

 

 


	35. Chapter Thirty Two

Illuminated only by the flickering orange light of a lit flaming torch, a lighting system never updated in the centuries since its installation as though bringing modernity into this place of ancient torture would somehow be inappropriate, nineteen of the twenty two Guillty still twitched and gasped and groaned with life. As long as they were watered daily, it was possible that the strongest of them might last as long as a week though they wouldn’t be thankful for the extra time their initial rude health had accorded them. It was the three who had already passed through the veil to their final judgement who were the ‘lucky’ ones.

In the dim light, most of the Guilty were simply swaying silhouettes cast against the overpowering blackness of the closed pit. The air was thick and dense with the malodorous smell of bodily fluids and the sweet sickly undertone of inexorable putrefaction. Only a creeping breeze from the tunnel door brought faint hints of fresher, oxygenated air and that seeped through the cloying stench like a teasing whisper, taunting with its reminder that there was a world still existing outside this grim dark place of torment and certain death.

The pit had been a quiet place since the Conclave, save for the low chorus of the weak, throaty groans of the impaled, but on this, the third evening since the sentence was passed, the near-silence was occasionally broken by a sharp snap or a distinct pop, as bones strained past endurance finally began to splinter and break. A pelvic bone cracking apart. Hips dislocating from their sockets. Followed almost immediately by a wet slide as bodies, now freed from skeletal restraint, fell even lower onto the pyramids only to jerk to a shuddering stop once more as flesh refused to stretch quite wide enough, yet, for further descent.

He watched, as hands frantically, impossibly, tried to grasp the slick surface of the stone beneath them to halt the inexorable effects of time and gravity, as toes reached in desperation towards a floor that promised relief if only feet could touch the ground before the stone inside them tore them assunder. Yet, contrarily, other bodies wriggled violently as though trying to hasten their descent, to bring closure to their agony. In that room of the damned, the only choice was to race towards death or pointlessly struggle against it but, either way, death was the only outcome.

He watched, and he wept and, even, once or twice he thought to perhaps hasten matters by weighting ankles or pressing down on the shoulders of the suffering, but, in the end, he did nothing, because though it was he who had judged their lives forfeit, the precise timing of their demise was at the whim of the All-Father and it was not his place to second guess the extent of his God’s hunger for vengeful judgement.

“The Pack think you are down here wallowing in the misery of the soon to be dead and celebrating their suffering,” a voice said, unexpectedly, and he looked up to see his mother emerging from the tunnel door. “Meg is enjoying spreading rumours of your surprisingly violent bloodlust. “

“It undoubtedly makes me seem more interesting,” Castiel allowed.

Chuck dipped his head in acknowledgement. “It suits everyone that you are perceived as completely merciless to the guilty and, because you _did_  show mercy to two souls during the trials, your ‘bruality’ is seen as a considered choice, a glorious righteousness. A sword of justice, not a hammer of wrath.”

“Which is, I imagine, the reason Cain insisted they were included in the public trial even though we already suspected the truth of their situations and could have ascertained the truth privately."

“Justice does need to be seen to be done,” Chuck agreed. “Even though the doing of it can cost more than people imagine. Tell me, do you weep from regret or from sorrow?”

“Both,” Castiel replied. “I regret that it was necessary and I sorrow for their suffering and yet, most of all, I regret that I do not sorrow more. What kind of a monster does it make me that I can do something like this to other human beings and not even feel true guilt over it?"

“That you did what needed to be done, without hesitation, is what makes you a great Primá. That you take no pleasure in having done it, makes you a great man, Castiel. As for pity, what is the use of it if there is nothing to be done?”

“I don’t doubt they deserved death for what they did. I just wonder whether making it take days was an unnecessary viciousness on my part.”

“Nah,” Chuck spat, waving his hands dismissively. “This is nothing, pup. Twenty years ago your Uncle Lucifer decided to make an example of a village in Peru who had ritually sacrificed an Omegá in some fucked up belief it would halt a famine in the area. He dismembered the whole village, removed their limbs, their genitals, their eyes, their ears, their lips and their tongues. Then he placed them on the pyramids for two days, just long enough to ruin them, but not long enough to kill them. Then, when they resembled nothing more than maggots, with an open gaping hole on either end, he put them in a pit into which food was regularly thrown. So they lived in that pit, blind, deaf and mute, wriggling around like worms whilst they slowly rotted away from diseases caused by the suppurating sores that developed on their skin from rolling around in mud and shit for years. I understand it took over a decade before the last of them finally met the judgement of the All-Father. Now that was ‘unnecessary viciousness’.”

“It certainly adds some perspective,” Castiel admitted.

“What you have wrought here will cause shockwaves through the American Free Betas. There will be times in the future when you look back at this scenario and find yourself wondering whether you should or could have handled it differently. Some terrible situations will develop directly because of this Conclave that you will be tempted to blame yourself for. When those moments of doubt hit you, when you find yourself filled with regret and feeling the weight of blame on your shoulders, remember this, Castiel, this Conclave had to happen. All that occurred here had to be done. Those who die around us right now, had to die and this is the manner of death which they had to suffer. This Conclave was a fixed point in time, just as Alaistair’s attendance was always foretold and when, in time, you face the first of the two terrible consequences of his presence at the Conclave, you must remember that this was ALL unavoidable and that you bear no guilt over the matter.”

“What terrible consequences?” Castiel demanded.

“I can say no more on the matter,” Chuck said, firmly. “The importance of this conversation is simply for me to prepare you for a future situation, not to say anything that may change your path before you reach it."

"I don't understand," Castiel said, frowning with incomprehension. "If you knew this Alaistair was here to do harm, why didn't you say something?"

"Some things are immutable."

"What does that even mean? How does that not make you equally culpable, mother? if you know someone is doing wrong and yet do nothing to stop them, under Pack Law, that makes you an equal party in the wrongdoing."

"It would make YOU equally guilty," Chuck corrected him, somewhat smugly. "I am an Omegá. According to Pack Law I can do no wrong."

Castiel rolled his eyes. "Okay, forget Pack Law. What about the obligation to act because of basic common morality?"

"Putting aside my utter hatred of that particular word, the reason prophets have always been born within the Omegá designation is the very fact we are held to be unaccountable. It is maddening to see the future, Castiel. Even more so because we see some things so clearly and others through a fog. It's like looking through a cracked, distorted mirror where you almost see the whole picture but never quite manage to do so. True understanding remains forever just out of reach. But over the years I have come to understand that those things I see most clearly are the immutable, unchangeable things. FIxed points around which everything else swirls in a fog of still changing possibilities.

"Imagine the universe to be a huge pond. The surface is still and calm but underneath, in the depths, currents ebb and flow out of sight but not without purpose. And, now and then, a stone falls into the pond. Sometimes it is a pebble, other times it is a boulder, but when that stone falls it causes ripples in the pond and, depending on the size of the stone, those ripples might be gentle or they might be tsunamis and sometimes those ripples overlap, intersect each other and cause yet more ripples of their own.

"The stones fall, Castiel, and nothing can stop them doing so. The stones have to fall. Remove just one of them and the ripple pattern of the whole pond changes. A ripple that should have been intercepted suddenly flows out of control and intersects with a ripple it should never have reached. Some things have to happen. Some stones have to fall. And sometimes they are terrible stones and you imagine the pond would be a better place if they weren't allowed to fall, but remove the stone and you remove its rIpples and maybe, just maybe, it is the ripple from a terrible stone which is the most crucial ripple of all."

"So you're saying that this Alaistair is a 'stone'?"

"He is, perhaps, the most terrible stone of all. But, still, he has to fall else the whole pond could be lost to chaos and confusion."

"So you see these 'stones' and even though you know they are things that shouldn't be allowed to happen, you can't act to stop them happening for fear of changing other crucial happenings, so what's the point of you seeing them at all?"

"Sometimes I wonder the same thing," Chuck admitted. "There are many times I've believed it a curse not a gift. Particularly when I know something terrible is fated to happen to someone that every instinct cries out at me to protect from harm. I have to remind myself I am not the author of this tale, just another player in the drama, and I see the endgame and have to believe that all the threads of this tapestry have been chosen and woven with care.

"As for why I see them... I believe it is my role to change people's perceptions rather than events."

"I don't understand what you mean," Castiel said.

"Sometimes the event itself is the least important thing; what matters are the ripples. And the effects and flows and even the direction of those ripples can be altered. Take the act of docking, for instance. Put aside the horror of it as a mutilation, the obscenity of the act itself, and consider, truly, unemotionally, what difference it truly makes to an adult Omegá. Put aside for one moment the utter evil done to Claire and consider it in its more normal practice as being something done by Betas to a pup in their late teens. What is the usual true physiological effect of castration in an Omegá ?"

"Very little," Castiel admitted reluctantly, after a long moment of reflection. "As long as an Omegá is already grown almost to full adulthood, the physical repercussions are minor. It's not like castrating a male of the other designations because adult Omegáres have very little requirement for testosterone. From their late teens onwards, it is the estrogen from their female aspects that is most crucial to their ongoing development and Omegáres cease testosterone production almost entirely by eighteen anyway.

"Exactly," Chuck agreed. "At most the Betas are hastening a natural process by just a few years. Obviously there are some physiological differences caused by the castration if it is done to a younger teen but done after sixteen it is unlikely to fundamentally change anything except at most an inch or two of height and a few pounds of muscle. Done at eighteen, it's unlikely to change anything except from a cosmetic point of view. After all, we Omegáres do not depend on our male genitalia for sexual satisfaction."

Castiel blinked doubtfully. "You're saying it doesn't matter?"

"Of course it matters. But, then again, maybe not so terribly as it appears. Not in the grand scheme of things."

"But they are being physically mutilated."

"And, again, does that really matter? No, really, Castiel, who does that mutilation really effect? The Omega or the Primá who finds it so distasteful to look upon? That's the point I'm trying to make. Of course the castration of Omegáres is an evil, senseless crime. It is a sin. It is obscene. But an Omegá can choose to perceive that crime committed against them as fundamentally irrelevant and rise above it. And any Primá who can't see beyond what is, effectively, just a little battle scarring does not deserve the right to mate an Omegá anyway. It's all a matter of perspective. The act of castration is a brutal stone, but the ripples it causes don't have to be as destructive as intended.

"So you're saying your role as a prophet of the Omadonna is to make Primáres accept what the Betas are doing?" Castiel protested.

"You're being deliberately obtuse. Everything I've worked towards since the moment of your birth has been aimed at encouraging you to do something to stop these obscenities for good. My point, though, is that it's already too late for some Omegáres. It's already happened or will still happen before a radical change is possible in Beta Lands. So the question isn't whether you will act to stop the wrongs, I have no doubt of that. What concerns me is whether in encouraging you to see the horror, I have prevented your ability to see beyond it."

Castiel pondered his mother's words, then glared at him in suspicion. "So this whole conversation has nothing to do with Primáres in general, just me in particular. Why? What is it that you are trying carefully 'not' to say to me?"

Chuck didn't answer immediately and, other than the sound of another pelvic bone splintering in the pit, the silence remained heavy and oppressive. Then Chuck sighed deeply and said, "I want you to offer Claire your mating bite."

For a moment, Castiel's shock was so great that he could barely compute his mother's words. Then shock gave way to outrage.

"No," he refused, though it hurt him deeply to deny his mother anything. "I won't. I can't. I.... no, just no, a thousand times no."

"Because Claire is an 'insane mutilated whore'?" Chuck demanded archly.

Castiel flushed deeply. He had indeed used that phrase to describe Claire to his Sire but it had been said as a description, not an insult. The Omegá was not to blame for 'her' behaviour but it was unsettling to witness the poor creature's increasing desperation now she had lost the attentions of the Free Alpha teens.

"It's not that," he denied, then honesty forced him to add "well, not just that. You promised me, mom, when you denied me Joshua, that I would know when I met my Omegá. So, believe me when I say that Claire is definitely not my Omegá."

"Of course she isn't," Chuck agreed, easily.

Wrong-footed by Chuck's easy agreement, Castiel could only gape at him in total incomprehension.

"I'm not asking you to take Claire as your bride, you silly pup. I'm simply asking you to mate with her, give her what she needs and then immediately break your mating bond."

"I still have absolutely no idea what you think that would achieve."

"Claire hasn't been driven insane by the muting, Castiel, but by the way it was used to abuse her on top of all the other years of abuse. Do you know why Omegáres are so easily abused? Why we have so many sexual physiological triggers that can be used against us?"

"Because an Omegá is physically primarily designed for reproduction."

"Exactly. An Omegá has an inbuilt imperative to reproduce. That imperative is primed at presentation and then triggered from the very first penetration. In a Pack, since an Omegá meets his Primá as a virgin, it often ensures conception on the first mating which was a valuable characteristic historically when Primáres might not have survived long enough to guarantee repeat opportunities. On the rare occasions a mating was unfruitful, the Omegá would become increasingly sexually aggressive towards his mate, demanding repeated mating opportunities until such time as conception was achieved.

"The problem for Omegáres in this modern world is that the Betas have learned how to abuse that natural reaction. The more an Omegá is penetrated, the more desperate they become to conceive and the longer they remain unpregnant, the more they want to be penetrated. When the only males mounting Omegáres are Alphas who can't impregnate them, the more the situation escalates. But Omegáres are intelligent human beings, not dumb animals, so they aren't total slaves to their biology. They can mentally fight against the natural instincts to mate incessantly, even if their actual bodies betray them during the physical act, so whilst they may be physically incapable of resisting rape they can retain the mental ability to identify their own lack of consent in the matter.

"But the operation that left Claire mute also left scarring in her throat that triggers her compulsion to comply. So she's been left in a permanent state of compliance and that, coupled with four years worth of being driven mad with the biological imperative to conceive, has left her literally incapable of wanting anything except a mating bite on her mound and a pup inside her belly."

"So you think I can magically restore her sanity by fucking a pup into her?" Castiel demanded crudely.

"No, but I believe that if you bond with her and then deliberately break the bond, you will leave her literally barren and that will break her compulsion to conceive and that should enable her to eventually regain her senses."

Castiel blinked with astonishment as understanding dawned. "That might actually work," he agreed grudgingly. "Omegáres would never survive the death of their mates if a broken mating bond didn't also cease their biological imperative to reproduce because Omegáres can only bond once."

"And Primáres can bond more than once, so doing this for Claire won't prevent your ability to mate with your Omegá when you eventually find him. You can do this kindness for her and then I will take her with me when Cain and I leave. We will offer her a place in our Pack as a dowager Omegá and you will know your son will grow safely in my care even if Claire never recovers sufficiently to be trusted with the sole care of a pup."

Castiel shook his head in denial. "I understand and even, reluctantly, agree to the idea of offering her my bite. Some Primá has to do it and considering how much difficulty I have with the idea, I can't imagine you'd have much luck trying to convince another Primá either, but if the science is sound it will work regardless of whether or not I actually mount her and, frankly, I have no wish to do so. So why would she ever bear my pup?"

"Because I didn't raise you to be cruel, Castiel, and there could be no more wicked a cruelty imposed on an Omegá than to deny him the right to at least one pup before rendering him barren. Or 'her' in Claire's case."

"Shit," Castiel cursed eloquently.

"Shit, indeed," Chuck agreed. "I told Meg you wouldn't like my solution."


	36. Chapter Thirty Three

"Are you absolutely certain about this?" Mary asked, as they passed the sign announcing they had finally arrived at Singer's Salvage and Autoparts, drew to a halt in the front yard of Bobby's house and exited the car into the brisk chill of early evening. Fall in northern Nebraska was considerably colder than the temperature they were used to just a state lower in Kansas.

Dean shrugged and offered her a guileless smile. "I honestly don't know why, but I'm sure this is our best option, mom. It just feels right to me."

His eyes were a clear green, with not even the faintest trace of the aura she had seen earlier, but he had retained the same quiet certainty and, in lieu of a better idea, Mary decided to continue trusting him. It was a bit too late to change her mind now, anyway, because the front door of the house was already opening in response to their arrival.

The property had not changed significantly in a decade. Possibly the shingles were more weathered and the painted wood was now so faded that its original colour had passed into the realms of distant memory, but the overall impression of tired neglect remained the same.

What had also remained unchanged was the warmth of Bobby's welcome.

He greeted them at the door with the same grumpy visage and the same double-barrelled shotgun.

Mary stiffened defensively, Sam pouted sulkily, Dean however plastered a huge genuine grin on his face and simply said, "Hi, Uncle Bobby."

Bobby Singer's mouth curled into a sneer and he sniffed deeply then harrumphed grumpily. "Guess I don't need to guess who left that handprint round your neck, pup, though..." and he paused and looked at Mary significantly, "surprised it wasn't your neck he went for. Never known John Winchester risk the moneyshot."

"We going to have a problem?" Mary asked bluntly.

"That asshole know you were coming here?"

"Even I didn't know I was coming here," Mary replied. "Dean had a sudden hankering to see his 'Uncle' Bobby."

Bobby frowned and harrumphed again but lowered his weapon. "Well, get in then and shut the door 'fore you let all the damned heat out the house, damned idjits the lot of you." And, with that, he wheeled his chair backwards, then turned and rolled away without even checking whether they were following.

And, somehow, it was just that easy.

All the answers Mary had prepared for difficult questions remained unspoken because Bobby never asked them. She knew he assumed, as everyone did, that Dean was the illegitimate offspring of a Beta Sire but the discussion was never had because Bobby apparently didn't care to know one way or the other the actual circumstances that had led to their current situation. A practical man, Bobby had little time for 'whys' or 'hows'. He seemed perfectly content to simply accept that things were the way that they were and handle them accordingly.

Neither was it ever verbalised whether they could stay with him or, even, how long they might be welcome even if they could, (though welcome was not necessarily the right adjective for Bobby's peculiar version of hospitality) although there came a point that first evening, after a supper that was slammed onto the table with a gruff countenance belied by the obvious effort that had gone into its preparation, when Bobby had grumbled something about it being past the pups' bedtime and wasn't it about time she got their cases in from the car.

And in the days that followed, as the curmudgeonly man continued to grumble and gripe about them being underfoot, Mary noticed that Bobby also quietly increased his regular order from the local grocery store and found a lot of reasons to keep the hands of her two pups busy with tasks around the house and yard that caused him to spend a lot of time with both of them.

In that way a whole week passed before Bobby sat with her, late one evening and said, out of nowhere, "Heard some interesting news on the hunter grapevine today. Seems some woman in a small town in Kansas went crazy. Killed her Sire who was one of those Ablest idjits, shot the local sheriff and legged it out of town with her pups."

"Really?" Mary said, calmly. "I imagine she had her reasons."

"Maybe she just needed _one_ reason," Bobby said, equally calmly.

"One good reason would do it," Mary agreed.

Bobby stared at her thoughtfully, then nodded his acknowledgment of the point. He appeared satisfied the conversation was over but Mary couldn't possibly leave it there. Despite her calm exterior, Bobby's words had reawakened a deeply embedded terror that she had been deliberately repressing for days.

"So... I imagine there's quite a manhunt going on," she suggested cautiously.

"Not so much," Bobby replied. "With all the shit that went down last week in Detroit, one little righteous killing in Kansas is hardly going to make much of a headline. Now if she'd killed the sheriff it would be a different story but she had the sense not to open that particular can of worms so, if she stays low and keeps her head down, I reckon the whole thing might get cold-cased sooner rather than later."

Mary blinked with confused astonishment. In the privacy of her own head she had been imagining an entire army of vengeance being raised against her, rising from the south like a swarm, and Bobby was somehow implying the whole thing might instead just blow over like a summer storm.

"I would have expected something like that to be taken more seriously," she said.

"Probably would have if it had happened on any other day," Bobby allowed. "But little dramas get buried by epic ones. It's the way the world works. Do something on a 'bad news day' and it gets buried so deep below the more serious shit that it gets quickly forgotten."

"I heard a lot about what happened on the radio as we drove here," Mary confirmed. "It definitely seems to be dominating all the news channels and opinion shows."

"Well taking out a couple of dozen City leaders and prominent surgeons in one fell swoop will tend to do that. I think everyone had genuinely forgotten that the Packs can still legally enforce most of the tenets and penalties of original Pack Law. Hell, I think even the Packs themselves had forgotten before this new guy took over the MidWest. Still, bottom line is the government has enough on its hands dealing with the panic caused by that new Primá flexing his wings. They aren't going to waste any Federal resources over a single murder in some little backwater and, since rumour is the woman has crossed into another state, it's a federal matter now so the local cops aren't going to pursue it for long either."

Mary pondered this thoughtfully. "Sounds like she couldn't have timed it any better if she tried. The Detroit thing is really causing that much of a panic?"

"In the last couple of days, several of the cities that have teenage Omegáres who are sixteen or older have already put them up for auction to the Packs instead of keeping them until they're eighteen like they originally intended. Seems the bureaucrats are running scared. The Department of Health is running around trying to convince local governments that what happened was an anomaly but self-interest is winning over greed. Most folks would rather take the financial hit of having to replace the Omegáres with brothels than run the risk of facing Pack justice. I wouldn't be surprised if this Castiel guy has single-handedly managed to kill the idea of putting Omegáres in rut houses forever."

"It can't possibly be that easy," Mary argued, though she desperately wanted to believe it was true.

"It isn't going to stop Omegáres being abused at a local level," Bobby agreed. "There are too many Ablests in small local governments who will still see an Omegá as a cheap easy solution to the problem of teen Alphas and will be too damned arrogant to believe they will be held accountable by the Packs. But I think the practice of industrialising the process in the Cities will fall out of favour sooner rather than later. Chicago is already suggesting they are going to start sending teen Alphas back to their hometowns, saying the problem needs to be handled at a local level to spread the cost burden. I guess any of those towns that get their hands on an Omegá will weigh the risk and decide its worth taking."

"So pups like Dean will run the risk of getting raped by a few local Alphas instead of dozens of city Alphas and I'm supposed to say hurrah? I'm supposed to tell my son it's okay for that shit to happen to him because, well, golly, Dean, think how much worse it could have been? Why the fuck don't the Packs do something to stop it happening at all?"

"Like what, Mary? War? Is that what you want?" Bobby challenged.

"If that's what it takes."

Bobby frowned at her thoughtfully then shrugged. "Reckon it might even come to that eventually, but not soon enough for pups like Dean. Best bet will be to let folks think he's a Beta for as long as possible."

"That's my plan," Mary agreed. "If I can keep him safe until he's sixteen we'll have options."

"You might want to give some serious thought to moving east," Bobby agreed. "Definitely seems the MidWest might be a good place for an Omegá to move to. Good job you didn't drive through Kansas City last week though."

"Why?"

"Because within twelve hours of the senate being advised of the intention to hold a Conclave, the government had mobilised to put roadblocks on all the major routes into the Midwest. I guess they immediately figured the realisation that the Pack there is willing to take action in Beta Land would act like a siren call to anyone with a reason to try and get a pup into Pack hands without facing border control."

Mary's blood ran cold as she remembered her peculiar instinct to turn left on the I70 instead of right. If she hadn't listened to it, she would already be in jail and god alone knew what would be already happening to Dean. She shivered slightly at the feeling that something or someone had been guiding her decisions and, remembering the golden aura in Dean's eyes, she had a pretty good idea who that 'someone' might be.

The idea was as terrifying as it was comforting. The idea that Packs were finally mobilising, that deities were directly interfering in mortal business, it all smacked of something terrible on the horizon.

Or maybe something wonderful.

But Mary had the sinking feeling that nothing wondrous occurred without a terrible cost being paid regardless.


	37. Chapter Thirty Four - AKA The end of the beginning.

On the first night of the new moon, as dusk fell, Chuck sat in the privacy of the guest room he’d been staying in for the past fortnight and stared glumly at his own reflection in the dressing table mirror. Then he took a deep, steadying breath and began to pray.

“I saw him again today. The vision was so clear this time that it seemed I could almost reach out and touch him. It’s as though you ‘tagged’ him last week, left an indelible mark of your intervention like a beacon drawing my visions towards him, and, ever since then, I seem to have a direct line into his life. I don’t know if that was your intent or just some side effect because I don’t see why you would deliberately want to test me this way.

“Is this some kind of temptation? Because if it is, I think I might fail to resist it. Might as well put that out there right up front. I saw him today so clearly that I even saw the sign. _Singer’s Salvage and Autoparts._ And it wasn’t easy to find him just from that but the internet is a wonderful thing and google is my friend and it didn’t take _that_ many hours to figure out where he is or to work out how fast and easy it would be to just jump in Cain’s diplomatically protected plane and pop over there to collect him. And if I did so, it would all be over, wouldn’t it? All of your decades of scheming and manipulating to create a perfect storm and, poof, all gone. And you couldn’t even stop me from doing it, because if you were able to interfere directly on this plane of existence you wouldn’t need to use people like me at all, would you?”

In the mirror, Chuck saw his own eyes spark with furious gold.

“Yes, I didn’t think you’d like me saying that,” he said, conversationally. “But let’s call a spade a spade, shall we? He’s such a lovely pup already but I can see in the bones of his face that once he loses the gangly puppy prettiness, he’s going to be truly _beautiful_. And so strong. So tall. So…Alpha. And that’s when I got really interested, started really paying attention, started wondering exactly who this ‘Dean Smith’ is and then a few other things started to make sense to me, other visions, other stones I've seen through the years and I realised Dean is a _Winchester_ and suddenly I understood _everything_.”

The glare in his eyes intensified like a dry-timber pyre whooshing into flame.

“Well, perhaps not everything,” Chuck admitted. “But _enough_. Enough to know you’ve deceived me or maybe just let me deceive _myself_ but, either way, you’ve let me set something in motion that I don’t know if I can live with. I don’t know if I want to live with it. Castiel is my _son_ , damn you. He isn’t just a puppet you can manipulate like this. He isn’t just an actor waiting to speak the lines you want him to say or act the role you need him to play to achieve your own ends.

“And what about Dean, brave beautiful Dean, why should I let this happen to him? Why should I stand by and allow it when all I need do is make one short flight to collect him and I could bring the curtain down on this whole damned wicked play. By this time tomorrow I could have my son’s future bride safely in this Pack Hall, still virginal and pure and largely unharmed. He could spend the next two years living like a queen-in-waiting, learning to embrace his designation instead of fearing it. Letting him learn to love Castiel. Letting Castiel fall in love with _him_. Why can’t it be so?”

In the mirror, Chuck saw the raging golden fire in his eyes expand and emanate outwards until the whole glass was bathed in gold and then, in the midst of that glow, he saw a picture form on the mirror, an image of the planet and, as he watched, he saw that planet crack and splinter and rip apart like a bomb exploding.

Chuck shuddered but held his ground. “You say this, always. This is _always_ your answer; that the world will burn in hellfire it this doesn’t come to pass. But isn’t it possible that there could be another way? Look at the changes already wrought by the Conclave. Why can’t those changes just continue at their own pace, with Castiel supported by his _unharmed_ bride. Why does this have to end in war and pain and death? Why do my son and Dean have to pay the sins of the world with their own suffering? Why do you hunger so for the blood of these two innocents to be spilt?”

Gradually the vision of the shattered Earth was erased and replaced with a picture of a vast, still lake into which a slow, steady rain of stones fell. And inside each stone, Chuck saw a familiar story, and then those stories began to twist together, expanding, breeding, creating, and with each waft and weave of each individual tale wrapping and embracing the next, he began to finally, _truly_ understand the vast tapestry of the universe and he realised that he had always been mistaken in his belief that the stones were individual fixed points in time. They were all simply parts, _aspects_ , of a greater whole. Or, more precisely, two greater wholes.

Just _two_ fixed points. Two entities. Yin and Yang. The All-Father and his Bride.

Choked with tears, with wonder, with terror, Chuck finally saw the whole story and understood _everything_.

But for there to be a sacrifice, even one so vast and incomprehensible as the one the Omadonna offered, still _someone_ had to wield the blade.

“I can’t,” he gasped. “Don’t ask this of me. Don’t ask me to be your instrument in this. Don’t let me be the one whom history curses as your betrayer.”

The only answer was silence.

The picture faded, the glow in his eyes dimmed and disappeared.

Chuck was left staring into the reflection of his own, tear-stained face as the weight of the burden lain on him threatened to crush his soul.

~

On the second night of the new moon, a week after he had first reluctantly agreed to do it, Castiel visited Claire.

It was Chuck who suggested the timing, saying that since an Omegá was most fertile as a new moon was rising it was the most probable time to achieve pregnancy with a single mating. Castiel sincerely hoped his mother was right because he didn't believe he'd be able to face the idea of repeated attempts.

He'd done a fair amount of introspection since his conversation with his mother in the pit, particularly regarding his own aversion to Claire's mutilations, and had come to the honest conclusion that his reactions were not driven from some personal belief that he somehow deserved to mate only a physically 'perfect' Omegá. He was not judging the worthiness of the Omegá to be his mate. He would never even dream of being so arrogant as to criticise the physical appearance of a being as intrinsically holy as an Omegá.

It would be as unconscionable to object to castration and muting for the sake of his own sensibilities as it would be to reject a potential bride for any other imperfection, scar or injury. He was horrified by the mutilations simply because they wounded him in his very soul. His aversion was not a judgement on the Omegá for being mutilated, it was a bone-deep repulsion of the action that had led to that outcome.

But even that wasn’t the reason he could not face the idea of taking Claire, or any other similarly mutilated Omegá as his bride. He felt equally appalled at the idea of being chosen by a bride who was physically perfect but didn’t come to him as a virgin.

It had nothing to do with Chuck’s most hated word ‘morality’. Neither was it that he felt any entitlement to ‘own’ his bride’s flores. Meg had disabused him thoroughly of any idea that he had the right to dictate the ongoing sexual proclivities of a mate. He was fully prepared for the idea his Omegá might prove to be a lusty creature who might choose to make even more frequent use of his First Alphas than Meg did. And if that ever did cause him any concern, Castiel was sure he’d be able to nip any feelings of unwarranted jealousy in the bud by reminding those Alphas that he was their Primá.

His aversion was born of a far less visceral source.

Since he was a tiny pup he had dreamed of having his own Omegá bride but those dreams had not been sexually charged. They had been the desire for an epic, romantic love. He wanted the affection and companionship he shared with Meg but magnified a thousand-fold into a vast, all-encompassing passion, a love that would last the entirety of his mortal life and beyond.

But for love to exist at all, let alone blossom and grow into a profound bond, there had to be more than desire. There had to be trust and honesty and a meeting of minds and a merging of souls.

How could that possibly happen if one of them was so driven by an artificially induced biological mating imperative that it would be impossible for Castiel to ever know whether his own feelings were genuinely reciprocated? How could he ever believe in the professed love of an Omegá when he knew the desire they displayed was a false construct? What value could there be if the whole relationship was built on nothing more than the Omegá's physical need for his Primá cock?

He would never be able to trust the behaviour of any Omegá who came to him with their imperative to reproduce already triggered. Unlike a virgin bride, the Omagáres that came pre-used by Alphas were, through no fault of their own, simply looking for _any_ Primá-sized cock to fill the yearning hunger burning between their thighs.

He didn’t want to be objectified like that.

His soul would be crushed if he offered his love and was offered nothing in return but greedy lust.

Castiel didn’t want to be mated to someone who saw him as nothing more than the means to scratch a particularly irritating itch.

So although he would comply with his mother’s wishes and worship at Claire’s altar and offer her the sacrifice of a pup from his loins because, as a physical representation of the Omadonna, Claire deserved no less than whatever sacrifice satisfied her desires, Castiel would feel no regret in severing their bonding the moment that offering bore fruit.

And although he suspected the real reason his mother was asking this of him was to prepare him for the likelihood that _his_ Omegá would come to him in a similarly abused state, in the belief that this would convince him that Omagáres were desirable regardless of any mutilations, the truth was that his mother clearly didn’t know him as well as he thought he did.

Castiel couldn’t imagine ever not finding an Omegá unbearably attractive. Even Claire, poor maddened creature that she was, sang to his soul and made his cock swell with eager anticipation. It wasn’t Castiel’s body that rejected Claire. It was his heart.

And, really, he thought that Chuck should have realised that there was a reason Castiel hadn’t known about Claire’s failed auction until after the event. Castiel didn’t pay attention to _any_ of the auctions because he had no intention of ever accepting a bride who had already been mounted by another.

If it proved impossible to find the virgin Omegá his heart craved, Castiel had no intention of taking a bride at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And on that 'shocking' note, this chapter brings to an end what the history of this world will refer to as 'The First Book of the Omadonna'  
> The next chapter is, truly, where the 'real' story will begin.


	38. Chapter Thirty Five

They had been staying with Bobby for a couple of weeks before Sam, extremely hesitantly, raised the subject of school in a low, mumbling grumble about his ‘ruined future’ as they all sat at the kitchen table eating supper together.

Sam had been pretty weird, lately, which Dean thought was probably something to do with what had happened in Lawrence. Normally Sam would be all in mom’s face about stuff like missing school (which was also weird in itself, come to think of it) but he was understandably hesitant about complaining about their current situation given that it was, basically, his own damned fault.

Yes, Dean _was_ still a bit bitter about what had gone down even though, obviously, he knew Sam hadn’t meant any harm. Well not the kind of harm he’d actually reaped, anyway. And, clearly, Sam was feeling kind of awkward and embarrassed about everything and whilst generally that just manifested itself in sulky quietness (which wasn’t far removed from his normal state of being anyway) it was also making him cautious about making actual verbal complaints.

Sam’s weird behaviour was starting to freak Dean out. He almost missed Sam’s more usual vocal explosions because as uncomfortable as they were to experience, they were at least familiar.

The thing about Dean was that his emotions were pretty consistent all of the time. His default setting was a low-level sense of general contentment. He took hedonistic pleasure in all the small comforts life had to offer him (particularly where food was concerned) and started every day with a positive outlook and a general feeling of well-being. That’s not to say he didn’t have a temper. He’d always meet an insult with a raised fist rather than a turned cheek. But those tempers were transitory in nature and honest in execution. Dean wasn’t one for sulks or brooding misery. Upset him and you’d instantly face his anger but, conversely, apologise and make amends and the incident was just as swiftly forgiven. Dean didn’t bear grudges.

So he was bemused by Sam. He just couldn’t get his head around what drove his younger brother. Sam’s anger was never a swift righteous blade; it was a sneaky, brooding, simmer of repressed fury that would strike out when least expected. So sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between Sam being quietly sulky and Sam quietly plotting an extinction-level event. 

When Sam brought up the subject of schooling, their mom looked hesitantly at Bobby before answering. Dean figured that was because enrolling at a school implied a level of permanence that Bobby had never verbally expressed was definitely on offer to them. Perhaps Bobby understood that, because he spoke up before Mary had a chance to answer for herself.

“Probably best if you don’t enrol together. Folks might pay the wrong type of attention. It’s up to you, Mary, but my suggestion is that Sam joins first. Then wait a bit before introducing Dean. If anyone is looking, they’ll be expecting a mother arriving with two pups, not a sole pup. I can tell people you’re my niece, staying with me with your youngest because you’re freshly divorced and that your husband has kept your oldest. Then Dean can 'follow' in a few weeks and we’ll tell folks he missed his mom too much."

"Sioux Falls is a pretty big place," Dean said.  

"Big enough to call itself a city," Bobby agreed, "Though that is a bit of a stretch. Really it's just an oversized town and it’s pretty much got a town mentality. You aren't going to be that noticeable here given there's well over a hundred thousand people but you aren't going to be able to slip in invisibly either, like you could in a big city."

"It's not that, Uncle Bobby. I was wondering about Alphas. How likely is it that I'm going to run into some here?"

His mom gave a little gasp of distress, her brow creasing into a frown of annoyance that Dean was pretty sure was self-directed for not having thought to ask the question herself. His mom always blamed herself for _everything_.

Bobby pondered the question thoughtfully. "Hard to say," he admitted. "Specially with what's going on now with people saying teen Alphas need to stay in their birth districts until they are adults and most of the adult Alphas already having moved to places like New York. Presentation's never been an exact science anyway. It's all very well spouting statistics that prove Alphas are really rare, they are still as likely to pop up in a town of a thousand people as a city with several million.

"All I know for sure is that Sioux Falls has never been a comfortable place to be an Alpha. The actual City Council is largely made up of folks of an Ablest attitude even though the church isn't particularly strong here. So to the best of my knowledge I'm the only 'adult' Alpha on the electoral roll.  That was definitely true on the last census and I haven't heard of any recent arrivals.  But I would be surprised if there aren't a few pups in the district who are, or will be presenting as, Alphas. And with what happened in Detroit, they will be staying here during their rut years instead of being immediately moved out to a big city."

"So you're saying there's likely to be Alphas in the schools here?" Mary demanded. 

"Well, perhaps so and maybe even more pups who will be presenting that way soon enough," Bobby agreed. 

"Then Dean can't possibly go to school here. It wouldn't be safe." 

Bobby shook his head. "Can't see why it would necessarily be a problem unless Dean's stupid enough to drop his pants and wriggle his tush at them," he stated with blunt crudeness. "It's not like he's going to be wearing a t-shirt saying, I'm an Omegá, jump on board and fly me." 

Sam guffawed loudly.

"Sam, go watch tv or something," Mary snapped. 

"I'm not a little kid," Sam protested. "It's not like I don't already know about Dean's girly bits."  

"I don't have 'girly' anything," Dean growled. 

Sam responded by raising his right hand and wriggling his pinky finger significantly. 

"SAM," Mary thundered. "I won't tell you again."

Sam rose to his feet with a sneer and stomped out of the room, slamming the door as he exited.

“There’s something a bit…dark…about that one, sometimes,” Bobby muttered, staring at the door with a perturbed expression. If he didn’t know better, he’d swear Sam’s mood swings had a more sinister explanation than teen angst.

Dean chose to ignore Bobby’s comment, not wanting to agree but neither did he particularly feel like jumping to his brother’s defence at that precise moment. Instead he took a deep, calming breath, then returned to his original line of questioning, "Won't they be able to smell it on me?" 

Bobby shrugged. "Well, I ain't going to lie to you, pup. You do smell like a good time."

"BOBBY!" Mary protested.

"He needs to know, Mary. Ignorance won't keep him safe. Every Alpha he ever meets will scent his designation immediately. Point is though that the majority won't know what they are smelling, just that it's a 'good' smell. Kind of like honey. The only Alphas who will recognise what the scent actually signifies are those who have come across it before. So no freshly presented Alpha pup is going to sniff Dean and recognise him as an Omegá. What they will do is be particularly attracted to him and that could be an issue if he happens to be in their vicinity when they hit rut rage. But there's usually at least a year, maybe two, delay between presentation and the onset of the 'rage'. So he'll have plenty of warning of who to avoid long before it becomes an issue." 

"Do I smell attractive to you?" Dean demanded.

Bobby thought about it. "Honestly, you do, but it isn't this damned chair stopping me from wanting to do anything about it. I'm an adult and you're a pup, and that's reason enough to stop me thinking about you in that way. But, more importantly, all adult Alphas have as much control over their sexual impulses as adult Betas do. The only way you'd be in physical danger from an adult Alpha is if he was a sexual predator and even then he'd be more likely to prey on a Beta female than an Omegá." 

"So what you're saying is that the only Alphas I have to worry about are the teenage ones and they won't know I'm an Omegá and, anyway, they're equal opportunity rapists so I'm no more in danger from them than a Beta girl is?"

Bobby nodded.

"I can work with that," Dean said, easily. "It's not as bad as I'd been thinking it would be."

~

Dean was perfectly aware that his mom was as weirded out by his behaviour as _he_ was by Sam's.

She was clearly on tenterhooks, convinced that he was just 'repressing' his true feelings and would eventually erupt like a Roman candle when the full enormity of his situation finally hit him.  She kept dropping huge hints that it was okay if he was angry or scared or resentful or all of the above. That it was okay to be mad with his Sire and his Pops and his brother and even her for having birthed him (as if, somehow, it were her fault something had gone wrong in her womb to gift him his particular genetic oddity) and she was at pains to stress that if he _did_ lash out in anger she would forgive him.

But, frankly, he wasn’t repressing _anything_.

Sure he was pretty pissed about the situation and more than a bit scared about the future but he wasn’t sticking his head in the sand and pretending things weren’t fucked up. He was simply accepting that since they _were_ fucked up, he might as well put on his big boy pants and deal with reality.

He’d already spoken to his mother about sending for some coloured-contacts to conceal his green eyes and now he was aware of having a ‘scent’ he figured it would probably be best to continuously douse himself in honey-scented shower gels and stuff to hide the scent in plain sight, so to speak. It made more sense to him to distract with emphasis rather than try to mask it with something else that might wear off.

He was still pissed at his Sire, whom he was forcefully reminded of every time he looked in the mirror because even after nearly three weeks there was still some distinct, if now yellowy brown, bruising around his throat. But it wasn’t a raging anger and most of it was related to the way his Sire had acted like his Mom was a liar. Dean was quietly confident that, eventually, John Winchester would calm down, come to his senses and realise Dean _was_ his son and he would turn up to apologise to _both_ of them. 

The fact John hadn’t turned up _yet_ didn’t necessarily mean anything one way or another. According to Uncle Bobby, after the first rumors had come out of Lawrence and hadn’t then been followed by anything as interesting as a posted reward, the few hunters who had heard about it and shown an interest had swiftly moved on to other conversational topics. So it was highly likely that John knew nothing about what had gone down and wouldn’t even know they weren’t in Lawrence anymore until he finally got around to visiting them there. Dean had gotten the distinct impression from Bobby that John was a bit of a horn-dog who spent most of his time away from them chasing after Beta skirt anyway (which did, of course, beg the question where he got the nerve to accuse his _wife_ of infidelity).

Dean wasn’t mad at Sam either. He hadn’t been since the night it happened. He was, understandably, a bit less trusting of him though. He knew his brother had acted out of temper, rather than deliberate malice, and that Sammy really regretted what he’d done so Dean didn’t bear a grudge, exactly, but the real problem was that Sam’s temper hadn’t gone away.  Whilst he wanted to believe Sam would never endanger him again, and he knew, absolutely, Sam would never _want_ to do so, Dean wasn’t sure that Sam’s _temper_ felt the same level of concern.

As for his Pops… well that was a tough one. The fact he’d seen his mom plant a third eye in the middle of Pop’s forehead had gone quite a way towards making him feel considerably better about what had gone down. He knew his mom was worried about _that._ She was scared she’d scarred his psyche or some such shit because he’d seen his Pop’s head blown off and there wasn’t a lot he could say to reassure her except promise he wasn’t having nightmares about it.

Dean _was_ having more than a few nightmares, admittedly, but none of them were about what had happened _after_ his mom had burst into the room. What was stealing his ability to sleep through any night without waking at least once, was imagining what would have happened to him if she _hadn’t_.

He really wished there was someone he could talk to about stuff. Omegá stuff. Private, _personal_ Omegá stuff.  Because he’d rather poke his own eyes out than discuss that crap with his _mother_. Not that he thought she’d judge him, exactly, but there were just some things you didn’t want to talk about to your parents, no matter how cool they were.

Like the way he’d reacted to his Pop’s ‘spanking’.

Whilst his primary recollection of the whole event had been the pain he’d suffered and the terror he’d experienced at the sight of the ‘peg’ they’d intended to put inside him, what had really frightened him (and was still stealing his ability to sleep through the night) was the weird and crazy responses of his own body to the scenario.

First off, obviously, he wanted to know what the hell was the thing with the gag? What fucked up reason could possibly justify a genetically programmed reaction to collapse like a defenceless ragdoll just because something had been rammed down his throat? The idea he could be so easily rendered completely vulnerable was anathema to him. He needed to figure out why and how and, more importantly, how the hell could he stop it happening again?  What if he just swallowed wrong or something? What if he ate a bit too fast and choked on his food in the school canteen? Would he end up collapsed on the floor in a boneless heap like a jellyfish?

Secondly, and maybe even more scary, was his personal private suspicion that had his Pops been a little less ‘insane raving vengeful fucker’ and just spanked him instead of whaling on his ass until he was black and blue, Dean had a really horrible feeling it might have ‘worked’. At the beginning, before the whole thing had become so unbearably painful that his body was only concerned with survival, he had felt something inside him ‘loosen’ with each strike of Pop’s hand. And though he was still a bit too sore to experiment on himself, Dean was pretty certain that when he _could_ bring himself to try it, he would find that a more _gentle_ application of external force onto his buttocks might well have achieved the desired effect.

~

With the transcripts Mary had acquired from Ash and Bobby telling the school that the pup was his grand-nephew, it was surprisingly easy to get Sam accepted to attend school the following Lunesday.

Dean wasn’t sure how to feel about watching his mom drive his brother to school without him. She was driving one of Bobby’s old junkers from the scrapyard, her own ford having been tucked away in a far corner of the yard under a tarpaulin.

He had a low ache in his stomach, or maybe his kidneys, a deep throbbing cramping sensation that he could only put down to nerves. Which made him feel far too ‘girly’ for his own peace of mind. Dean Winchester didn’t do ‘nerves’.

Sure, he was worried for Sam. It wasn’t like his younger brother had ever won any popularity contests so his going straight into an 8th grade class in a new school was going to be difficult. All the other pupils would have already formed their cliques and Sam was probably going to have a hard time without Dean there to look after him. Bobby had already primed the school to accept Dean possibly ‘arriving’ too, in a couple of weeks, so he figured the worst Sam had to face was a fortnight of being the underdog before Dean could go and set people straight about how his brother should be treated.

Dean was also, privately, a bit worried about whether Sam could be trusted. What if he lost his temper with someone who was picking on him and suddenly decided saying his brother was an Omegá would make him look ‘cool’.  Dean hated himself for even considering the idea but, still, it wasn’t a totally improbable scenario, was it?

So he probably had more than enough reasons to justify feeling sick to his stomach.

Still, the arrival of the postman gave him a great distraction from his worries. The contacts his mom had ordered had finally arrived. He wasn’t sure he liked the idea of putting a piece of plastic in his eyes and it seemed more than likely he’d poke himself in the eyes more than a few times before perfecting the technique of inserting them, but his mom had at least ordered disposable lenses so not only would he swap them out daily to reduce the chances of infection but he’d be able to always carry some spares just in case something happened to cause one to fall out.

His mom had ordered them in a dark Alpha brown, worried that anything paler wouldn’t manage to mute the vibrancy of Dean’s naturally emerald eyes. Dean found that pretty ironic. Anyone looking at his build and eye colour might wonder about his designation being other than Beta but they definitely wouldn’t reach the conclusion of Omegá.

The first one went in surprisingly easily, but he struggled with the second, unable to prevent himself from flinching and blinking, so by the time he’d finally stopped accidentally flicking the lens inside out and actually gotten it into place his left eye was so red that he looked like a _pissed off_ Alpha.

Which was even cooler.

He raced down the stairs to show Bobby.

“What do you think?” he demanded, excitedly.

Bobby blinked at him. “Stop bouncing around and let me look at you properly,” he grumbled.

“Well?” Dean demanded, as Bobby just continued to frown at him in deep thought.

“You look like John,” Bobby said.

“Yeah, just like an Alpha. That’ll fuck with people’s minds for sure.”

“No,” Bobby insisted. “You look like _John._ I’d seen it in you before, but figured I had to be wrong and Sam looks so much like him that I just decided it was _Sam_ you reminded me of. But without your real eyes distracting me, it’s as clear as day. Except for being a darned sight prettier, you are the spit of John Winchester.”

“Well, I know you don’t believe it and _he_ doesn’t believe it and it’s impossible and all that crap, Uncle Bobby, but John Winchester really _is_ my Sire. My mom said so and she wouldn’t lie about something like that, would she?”

“I don’t suppose she would,” Bobby agreed, thoughtfully.

“So I guess I’m just the exception that proves the rule,” Dean stated firmly.

Bobby just nodded and said nothing else, though the realisation had stunned him and made a sneaking, terrible suspicion in his mind suddenly shift from impossible to highly probable.

Because if Dean _was_ John Winchester’s son, despite being an Omegá, then there was something really peculiar about the genetics of the Winchester line. If John Winchester could sire an Omegá then maybe he could also sire an Alpha.

And if that was the case, then suddenly the ‘darkness’ he had witnessed in Sam made perfect, terrible sense.


	39. Chapter Thirty Six

Despite Dean’s excitement over the lenses, the ache below his stomach didn’t ease as the day continued. If anything, it became so much worse that he began to imagine nightmare scenarios such as his gut twisting or his appendix bursting and a myriad of other causes that might involve a hospital visit and inevitable discovery of his designation.

It wasn’t until later that afternoon that he understood exactly why he had been cramping all day and the messy realisation, although logical, was possibly the most shattering thing he had faced since the moment of his presentation. He had managed, up until that point, to refuse to consider the inevitable consequences of having, as Sam put it, ‘Girly bits’. He wasn’t stupid. He knew about reproduction. He understood he was now capable of being impregnated and that, inevitably, had to mean he released eggs every month. He just hadn’t followed that idea through to its logical conclusion.

Having to face the terrible embarrassment of asking his mother for her assistance in the matter (or, more accurately, locking himself in the bathroom and refusing to come out until she’d left him a little ‘care’ package outside the door) depleted his entire reserves of equanimity. He was, he announced to her afterwards, through his closed and locked bedroom door, going to spend the next few days in his room, coming to terms with this new and all too unwelcome development.

At least it had had happened at home, he told himself, aware that it would have been yet another guaranteed indicator of his designation that would have potentially betrayed him. So in a way he was grateful it had happened so quickly after his presentation, giving him time and opportunity to figure out a way to handle things in future, but no amount of self-directed pep talks could convince him to leave the security of his bedroom and face either Sam or Bobby. He was pretty sure Bobby would be able to smell it on him, a thought that was mortifying, and he didn’t even want to imagine Sam’s crowing mockery should he notice what was up.

Mary, sensibly, had quickly given up trying to talk him out of his decision and instead just ferried regular supplies of drinks, food and other ‘necessities’ to his room whilst promising to tell Sam and Bobby that he simply had a ‘stomach upset’.

Determined to avoid any more nasty surprises, Dean spent the entirety of his self-imposed confinement abusing Bobby's bandwidth to troll the internet for everything he could discover about the Omegá designation.

It was pretty much an exercise in futility though, as he told his family when he finally emerged from his exile on Verdesday evening and joined them for supper.

"I can't find anything useful about Omegáres online," Dean grumbled. "It's all either Ablest rubbish or Department of Health propaganda that's actually more offensive than the religious crap. And it's all aimed at Betas. It's like no one can even imagine an Omegá wanting to read about the subject."

"Well, if you consider that there are around 300 million Betas in America and probably less than a hundred Omegáres, I doubt you're their target audience," his mom pointed out reasonably. "I know it's frustrating, baby, but I don't think it's a deliberate conspiracy."

"But how do I learn more about what I am if no one knows the answer?" he moaned.

"I wish I could do something to help. The only thing I can think of doing is trying to contact a Pack directly but I don't know how we'd do that without alerting the authorities. I'm pretty sure emails are monitored and letters into the Packlands are definitely subject to interception," she said. "Sending even the most innocent communication might put us on the government's radar."

"I'm not sure the Packs would offer much help anyway," Bobby said. "They consider their Omegáres to be holy beings, so I doubt they've ever asked them anything personal about their biology. It's hardly the topic of conversation you raise with someone you consider to be a cross between a queen and a goddess."

"Now that I definitely don't get," Dean huffed. "If anyone ever calls 'me' a queen I'll punch them in the face. I'm not a girl." He knew he was possibly being a bit oversensitive about the subject but given the week he’d just experienced he thought he had every right. Yes, he’d been forcefully reminded that he had biologically female parts as well as male but that didn’t make any difference to who he fundamentally was. He was male. A male with some female parts but still, absolutely, 100% male. He knew that with an absolute, soul-deep certainty.

"What's wrong with girls?" Mary asked, archly.

"Nothing's wrong with girls, mom. Girls are great. But that doesn't mean I want to be one."

"But you will be a girl," Sam argued. "We did some Omegá stuff in school this week. Apparently you have to have all your boy bits cut off because you don't need them anyway and if you keep them they'll cause cancer and kill you, and if you only have girl bits left then that means you're going to be a girl."

"Okay," Mary said, taking a deep breath. "That's brought up a few points that need dealing with. Firstly, Dean is not and never will be a 'girl'. He's an Omegá. That makes him a unique and special designation that defies comparison with normal human biology. Secondly, he doesn't have to have any 'bits' cut off. Since no Omegá has ever actually contracted cancer to our knowledge, how can that be anything except nonsense and bad science? And, thirdly, even if he did have his 'bits' cut off, he still wouldn't turn into a girl."

"Can everyone stop talking about my 'bits', please," Dean snapped. Then he frowned worriedly. "Are you sure about the cancer thing, mom?"

It was Bobby who answered. "It's complete balls. If an Omegá keeping his vestigial organs causes cancer, then how come Daniel's perfectly fine? He must be at least eighty by now."

"Who's Daniel?"

"He's the Omegá queen of South Dakota. His Primá, Ophriel, leads the Pack that oversees this whole state. Look him up on the laptop, Dean. There should be a recent photo online because he attended the Conclave in Detroit and the paps are sure to have taken pictures at the airport."

Dean tapped a query into google.

"I thought you said he was eighty," he challenged.

"At least," Bobby confirmed.

"No way," Dean protested. "He looks younger than mom."

"Let me see," Mary said, grabbing the laptop. "Wow, he's gorgeous. Mind you, not as beautiful as you're going to be," she told Dean loyally.

"He's wearing a dress," Sam said smugly, peering over her shoulder. "See, I told you Omegáres are girls."

"I swear I'm going to hit him in a minute, Mom," Dean growled. Whilst some part of him was relieved that Sam had come out of his recent funk enough to tease him, and he was reasonably certain the teasing was meant good-naturedly, he was definitely not in the mood to participate in brotherly banter.

“I swear I’ll hit him first,” she replied, glaring warningly at her youngest pup.

Bobby reached over and cuffed Sam lightly across the right ear. “Too late,” he said, smugly.

“Owww,” Sam whined. “That hurt.”

“Now who’s being a girl?” Dean grinned.

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

“I will hit BOTH of you,” Mary threatened.

Sam stuck his tongue out at Dean and Dean flipped him off, but they both then settled down under their mother’s quelling glare.

“So, anyway,” Bobby continued. “You can tell from the photo, that Daniel, who's is not a girl, has not had any physical modifications and he most certainly has not contracted cancer.”

"Ewww," Sam said, squinting at the photo. "His dress is kind of see-through. You can see everything if you really look closely. So doesn't that mean the Packs agree with the church that it's a sin for Omegáres to wear clothes?"

"Cain's bride, Chuck, has never been photographed wearing anything other than a shirt and pants," Bobby replied, "so I'm pretty sure Pack Omegáres dress however the hell they like. I don’t blame Daniel. I reckon anyone that looked that good at that age would probably enjoy flaunting their body the same way."

“I still can’t believe he’s that old,” Dean said. “Exactly how long do Omegáres live?”

Bobby shrugged. “I don’t know for sure, but Primáres and Omegáres probably live about three times as long as Betas.”

“What about Alphas?”

“About twice as long as Betas.”

Dean frowned thoughtfully. “So that makes you a lot older than I thought.”

“How so?”

“Well, I figured you for late fifties but you must be closer to a hundred to look as old as you do.”

Bobby looked both mildly insulted and yet reluctantly impressed. “Hundred and four, to be precise.”

Dean’s frown deepened. “So how do you know what an Omegá smells like?”

Startled, Bobby grunted in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“If you’re that old, you went through your rut eighty odd years ago. That means you couldn’t possibly have met an Omegá in a rut house ‘cos they’ve only been a thing for maybe thirty years maximum. So when did you meet an Omegá?”

“Don’t be rude, Dean, it’s none of our business,” Mary chided.

Bobby huffed but shook his head in negation. “Actually,” he said, “I kind of think it might be precisely your business. Dean’s right, of course. I did meet an Omegá before, which is why I recognised the scent on Dean. But it wasn’t anything to do with my rut rage years. The Omegá I met was a Pack Queen. Actually, he was _the_ Queen. It was Evan, bride of Seth, who was the Grandé Alpha Primá of the entire Americas at the time. Evan was the grandmother of Castiel.”

“That’s the Midwestern Grandé Alpha Primá,” Sam advised Dean loftily. “The nutcase one who just bumped off all those Betas in Detroit.”

“I know who Castiel is,” Dean said, though truthfully he had forgotten the name. “And, the way I figure it, those Betas were well overdue some come-uppance.”

“I heard at school he boiled them all alive and then the Pack had a feast and ate the bodies,” Sam announced, with ghoulish pleasure.

“I highly doubt it, Sam,” Mary retorted repressively.

“How did you meet Evan, Uncle Bobby?” Dean said, not wanting to be diverted into a discussion of the validity or otherwise of rumours spread by school-age pups.

“He visited me. It was almost fifty years ago. I’d just gotten a medical discharge from the army for an injury I got fighting some stupid Beta war; the injury that put me in this chair. I was in hospital at the time and I was pretty sure my life was over. I had no money, no job and no hope of getting one. Once my discharge money was gone, I was pretty much done for. There’s not a lot of opportunities in Beta Land for disabled Alphas.

“Anyway, I figured my best bet was to approach a Pack. I couldn’t see a future in Free Beta society so I thought I had nothing to lose. I hoped they might find a purpose for me, or maybe just put me down as useless but, either way, it would be better than having to beg financial help off Betas for the rest of my life.

“So I wrote to them and, instead of anyone replying by letter, Evan actually came to see me. I don’t think he wanted to run the risk of anyone else knowing what the purpose of his visit was and, as your Mom said, the government intercept cross-border letters. Evan gave me this place, mortgage free, and enough money to set myself up a business here and all he asked for, in return, was that when one day, far in the future, a particular someone arrived at my door in need I should welcome them in.”

“What particular someone?” Dean asked suspiciously.

“Evan didn’t give me a name. He just said I’d remember his visit and my instinct would tell me the rest. So I settled here, set up my business, married Karen, my wife, and waited. And when Karen died, I would have moved away, left the memories behind me, but I’d made a promise, so I stayed here and kept waiting. And then the three of you turned up and my instinct told me to let you in.”

“And this happened fifty years ago. Before even mom was born?"

“Yes.”

“Wow. That's really... well, actually, that's pretty damned weird and scary."

"Yup," Bobby agreed.

Mary looked equally unsettled. "Maybe you're over thinking it. Maybe he just meant he was doing something kind and that you should pay it forward at some point to someone else in need. Maybe we just happened to be the lucky recipients of that random chance."

Bobby shrugged. "Could be that," he agreed. "Certainly makes more sense than the alternative."

But Dean remembered his absolute certainty that fleeing to Uncle Bobby was their best and only hope and, although it beggared belief that someone could possibly have anticipated and prepared for that need half a century previously, it seemed equally improbable that the Evan thing had been co-incidence. Still, he decided nothing would be gained by arguing the point and his mom looked upset and scared by the idea so it was probably best to gloss over it.

"So tell me about Evan," he said. "What was he like? What did he look like?"

"Was he wearing a dress too? You know. Like a _girl_ ," Sam asked, with a smirk.

And that was it. Dean exploded out of his chair, Sam jumped to his feet and started to run, and the two pups charged out of the room, Sam fractionally ahead of his incensed brother.

"Leave 'em be," Bobby suggested when it looked like Mary would pursue them. "Sam's just teasing, winding him up, and you know Dean won't actually hurt him. Probably best to let them sort this out between them."

"I know pups fight and tease but, I don't know, maybe I'm just being over protective of Dean, but there's a distinct edge to Sam's jokes. Sometimes it feels like more than just normal sibling rivalry."

And though Bobby had his own thoughts on the matter, he simply offered a 'what can you do' shrug in response.

~


	40. Chapter Thirty Seven

Although the argument that had won his mother over to agreeing to him attending school despite the obvious risks of venturing out in public was based on his need for a decent education, unlike Sam, Dean didn’t particularly care one way or another whether he achieved any qualifications. 

For one thing, he doubted he’d realistically get the opportunity to use them in the future and, for another, although he considered he was of at least average intelligence, he wasn’t particularly interested in the idea of learning for learning’s sake.  Had he been born a Beta, he would still have felt the same way. Dean’s primary skills were in the application of practice rather than theory and any career that involved sitting for hours just thinking about stuff, rather than making or doing, would probably have driven him insane.  He’d intended to follow in his Sire’s footsteps, becoming a bounty hunter, so he’d never had any particular inclination to do more than pass a GED anyway.

So the main reason he’d argued for the right to attend school, despite the consequential risks, had very little to do with actually attending lessons.

Honestly, it was just that he was feeling bored and lonely.

Dean was a gregarious pup who thrived on company.  Even if necessity meant he’d be unable to make any _true_ friends at the school, given that any relationships he formed would be based on a big, fat Alpha-eyed lie, he still was going stir-crazy being stuck at Bobby’s place with only the company of his mother, his ‘uncle’ and, occasionally, his brother. Dean needed friendship like a flower needed water.

Which isn’t to say he wasn’t nervous on his first day at the new high school.

For one thing, he knew (through Sam) that there were at least two Alphas there.  Both were relatively recent presentations which meant, although they now had the unmistakeable Alpha teeth, they were probably at least a year or two away from posing a true danger to anyone. Yet, still, he had a completely understandable hesitation about being in their immediate vicinity and certainly had no intention of attempting to befriend either of them.

According to Sam, they were both douches anyway. One was a typical jock, with all the build and attitude that usually accompanied the characterisation. He was also, if Sam was to be believed, as thick as pig shit and twice as unpleasant to hang around with.  The other was a more studious type, far more Beta in both appearance and behaviour than his designation would normally suggest. “He’s small and unimpressive to look at,” Sam had told him “but he’s supposed to be dead smart, despite being an Alpha, and he's a really nasty piece of work. Nobody likes him."

The Jock was named Gordon Walker and he was a year older than Dean, despite sharing a grade, which suggested straight away that _he_ wasn’t any intellectual powerhouse.  The smaller Alpha was named Metatron, which was just about the stupidest name Dean could imagine, and he was also in 9th grade despite being Sam’s age which suggested that he _was_ on the smarter side of normal.

Wearing his contacts, with a sock stuffed into his briefs to suggest a considerably generous endowment inside his deliberately tight jeans, Dean was confident he probably looked more Alpha than either of them and, since many Alphas didn’t present before sixteen ( and it wasn't even completely unheard of for a presentation to delay even longer), Dean was pretty confident the other pupils would probably assume he was a late-presenting Alpha and deal with him with according caution. 

HIs 'disguise' certainly seemed to work with his homeroom teacher, Mr Rogers, judging by the man's immediate slight double-take followed by a stiffening of his shoulders and narrowing of his eyes that only eased when Dean offered him a blinding smile that disarmed him, primarily, by displaying the evidence of his distinctly non-Alpha teeth. Rogers looked momentarily uncertain, clearly torn between suspicion and doubt, then seemingly persuaded by Dean's easy posture and charming smile, something eased in the teacher and he finally greeted Dean with a tentatively genuine welcome.

Dean made the conscious decision not to automatically equate Mr Rogers' initial hesitation to being evidence of any rampant Ablest sensibilities. It was perfectly natural for any teacher to be wary of any new potential troublemaker in their class and nothing promised trouble quite the same way as a teen Alpha. 

Besides, the reaction proved beyond doubt that Dean had a good chance of pulling off his 'disguise'.  Sure, it wasn't perhaps as ideal as blending invisibly into the Beta population but Dean was realistic enough to know that would be highly improbable to achieve anyway.  He was perfectly aware he was strikingly attractive. No-one ever looked at his face without pausing to linger for a little longer than was strictly polite. It wasn't anything Dean had ever taken any particular pride in before his presentation, because vanity had never been his bag, but neither had he been ignorant of his own looks. The only reason he had gotten away with looking like he did for so long had been everyone in Lawrence knowing his Sire was an Alpha.  Clearly, in their new disguise as the ‘Smith’ family, there was no Alpha Sire in the picture so nothing to prevent suspicion arising.

Now, of course, he understood that the particular aesthetics of his face posed the biggest threat to any desire for anonymity and, although his attempt to study about Omegáres had borne little fruit, the one thing he'd become increasingly certain of was that as time passed his already attractive features would continue to develop into a striking, almost ethereal beauty that would be an obvious tell of his designation.

Omagáres were all, without exception, stunningly gorgeous. Even the few with less than perfect features from a perspective of Beta beauty, still had an overriding unearthly glamour that set them apart from mere 'mortals' and leant them an unmistakably alien aura of near divine aesthetic perfection.

Even the most rabid Ablest didn't attempt to deny the attractiveness of Omegáres. The Ablests corrupted and mutilated and debased Omegáres precisely _because_ of their unbearable beauty.  Dean was uncertain of the mechanics of why Betas had no sexual desire towards Omegáres.  He couldn't understand what biological switch in their heads repulsed them sexually even whilst their eyes hungered for the perfection of an Omegá's beauty but he suspected that, somehow, it was that precise anomaly that would go a long way towards explaining the extreme fucked-up nature of the world he lived in.

Maybe, it just somehow drove the Betas crazy to see something that beautiful, to crave that kind of perfection, and yet know right down to the core of their being that they were looking at something that was out of their reach. Maybe it was human nature to prefer to destroy something if they couldn't ever hope to possess it.

Still, the bottom line was that he already had the kind of good looks that always made people stop and do a double-take and he knew, as he aged, his attractiveness would only continue to increase, so the best way to hide the evidence of his designation was by confounding expectations. Dean had every intention of _acting_ like a Beta because he didn’t think he was even capable of imitating an Alpha in full douche mode, but he was smart enough to know that by planting the suggestion he 'might' be an Alpha, he would muddy the water so much that no-one should ever even consider the idea of him being an Omegá even though they’d undoubtedly identify that he was _something_ ‘other’.

Of course, the downside of presenting himself that way meant he wasn't welcomed by his fellow pupils as easily as he was used to.  When Mr Rogers told him to take a seat, he noticed that most of the pups sitting next to empty seats looked less than thrilled by the idea he might choose to sit next to them. Several of the girls looked unmistakably uncomfortable at the idea and even smiling at them with his non-Alpha teeth didn't seem to overcome their instinctive fear of his dark Alpha eyes and unusually tall, muscular body. He hadn’t really registered before, given that he’d attended school with the same pupils for years and so hadn’t really paid that much attention to their differing growth rates, that since both he and Sam had been gifted with their Sire’s build they were both considerably larger than their peers.

The most interesting reaction to his presence, though, was from a smaller male pup sitting completely alone in the third row whose otherwise unstriking appearance was belied by the way he greeted Dean's arrival with a growling, lip-curling sneer that revealed the top row of his sharp teeth. Had he been a dog, the Alpha’s hackles would have been raised because the threat in that sneer was unmistakeably one of deliberate challenge to a potential rival.

So, that must be Metatron, he told himself, torn between an instinct to flee and, yet, conversely filled with a devilish urge to make a point by seating himself next to the far smaller pup in a show of deliberate dominance.

And, after a moment's hesitation as he weighed his options, he plastered a wide, confident grin on his face, strode deliberately to the third row, and swinging his book bag off his shoulder, he sat down in the seat directly next to the Alpha.  The fact his bag hit and toppled the pile of books on Metatron's desk, knocking two to the floor _might_ have been an accident.  The fact he made no attempt to pick them up and just said "Oops," with a careless shrug, and then grinned at Metatron's anger was definitely _not_ accidental.

Despite his external deliberate casualness, Dean's entire body thrummed with adrenaline as he waited for the Alpha's response to the 'insult' and, for a moment, it looked like Metatron might explode with fury. But then the red flare in the smaller pup's eyes dimmed and he slouched and shrank under Dean's challenging gaze, dipping to pick his books up with an air of cowering defeat that was accompanied by a chorus of nervous titters from pupils in the surrounding rows.

Dean was torn between feeling elated and wanting to throw up.  His bluff had worked. He'd actually managed to dominate the Alpha with nothing more than a show of cocky indifference. Yet he didn't feel proud of doing it. It wasn't his nature to be a bully and he gained no satisfaction from humiliating someone. Still, he didn't regret it either. If keeping himself safe meant wounding someone's feelings he could learn to live with that guilt. He himself had far more to lose than a bit of pride. He had no illusions whatsoever about what Metatron would do to him if he knew the truth of his designation, and it would be a lot worse than a momentary loss of face.

He did worry that his show of 'Alphaness' would unfortunately reinforce the fear of the other pupils towards him but, oddly, as the morning progressed, and he moved from class to class, he found that the Betas seemed gradually less resistant to the idea of sitting next to him. Particularly when it became evident that Metatron was now making an effort to seat himself as far away from him as possible.  It became clear that the small Alpha was so unpopular with his classmates that Dean had unwittingly created himself a vast amount of goodwill by the simple act of standing up to him.

His suspicions were confirmed at recess when he reached the cafeteria, grabbed a lunch tray and, on looking around for somewhere to sit, was surprised to see one of the Beta girls from his home room offer him a gesture of welcome as she pointed at her otherwise empty table.

Puzzled, but pleased, he accepted the offer and seated himself opposite her. She was a small, slim girl with pale skin and vibrant red hair. Her eyes were a deep copper brown and they sparkled with good humour and intelligent curiosity as she asked, bluntly, "So are you an Alpha or just a bad-ass? Inquiring minds need to know."

“I’m fourteen,” Dean deflected. “I’m still like Schr _ö_ dinger’s cat; an unopened box of infinite possibilities.”

The girl responded with a bark of delighted laughter.

“You look like an Alpha,” she said, “but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt until you smile like a Jabberwok.”

Dean frowned at her suspiciously. “Are you an Ablest?”

Her eyes went wide with horror and she clasped her hands against her mouth. “Oh, shit,” she mumbled, behind her fingers. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m not an Alphaphobe. I just don’t wanna be besties with someone who might suddenly decide his cock would feel so good inside my cunt that I’d be flat on my back faster than I could say no. Not that I would, of course. Say no, I mean. I wouldn’t waste my breath on that shit. I’d just shoot you in the balls with my taser. And that would be a kinda mean thing to do to a bestie. But I’d still do it, just so you know.” She nodded emphatically.

“Good to know,” Dean said weakly, blinking with astonishment at the diatribe.

The girl blinked back at him, then flushed red, the colour staining her pale cheeks like sweet red apples. She lowered her hands, then offered the right one to him to shake.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’m still being rude. I’m Charlene Bradbury, but my friends call me Charlie.” She paused for a significant moment, “ _You_ can call me Charlie,” she offered gravely.

“Even though you might end up sticking a taser in my balls?” Dean teased, accepting the handshake.

Charlie thought about it, then shrugged. “Be a shame, but what can a girl do except protect herself? Actually, shame the government don’t do the same. Putting teen Alphas in electrified cock-cages would probably solve a lot of the world’s problems. I bet the Omadonna would be down with _that_ solution.” She grinned evilly.

Dean laughed. “Maybe you should write to that Castiel guy, make the suggestion to _him_. I get the impression he isn’t one to fuck around with political correctness.”

“You’re too cool to be an Alpha,” Charlie decided. “Even prepubescent Alphas are kind of dicks. I think it’s genetic.”

“Or maybe it’s just that they are already dicks who then happen to become Alphas and use that to excuse their dickishness,” Dean suggested easily, though he was kicking himself a little.

She thought about that, then shrugged her agreement to the idea.

“So what’s your name, Mr non-dickish Alpha-in-waiting?” she teased.

“Dean. Dean Smith,” he said.

“Well, Dean Smith, I think subject to the assumption you remain non-dickish, you may consider us friends.”

“I’m honoured,” he answered, with a mocking bow.

“But I’ve still got my taser,” she smirked.

“I absolutely promise you’ll never need it,” he assured her honestly.

She looked at him a long moment, then nodded. “I believe you,” she said.

And they both grinned.

 


	41. Chapter Thirty Eight

It wasn’t until the following Lunesday that Dean met Gordon Walker because, it turned out, the Alpha had been on a week’s exclusion for pushing some Beta pup’s head into a toilet bowl and then pressing the flush.

According to the Beta, Garth, this was not the first time he’d been subjected to Gordon’s campaign of terror.

Garth was one of Charlie’s friends, one of a half dozen or so pups who gravitated around the vibrant, charismatic redhead as though she was a Queen and they her loyal subjects. That wasn't a totally way-out comparison because the group met regularly to play Dungeons and Dragons and Charlie was established as their Dungeon Mistress. They took their role playing so seriously that their characters often blended into their real lives and, when Dean expressed surprise at that, Charlie explained it was their version of something called 'Larping', which apparently was a kind of Live Action role playing. According to Charlie, it wasn’t a ‘pup’ thing; a lot of adults 'Larped' and events were held all over the country where people could dress up as fantasy figures and play their characters for 'real'. As pups though, Charlie's gang had to settle for just playing an elaborate computer game both together and online but they still called themselves ‘The Larpers’.

The larpers (or the losers, as Dean affectionately called them in his head) were all the kind of skinny, bookish nerds that had always been the butt of Jock bullying in High Schools across the Country for as long as the institutions of schools had existed. They were also, Dean suspected, bright, clever pups who would all grow up to become successful, important adults with high paid careers whilst their tormentors would be left behind stuck in blue-collar poverty. In the normal way of things, jocks tormented nerds and nerds always had the last laugh, so Dean figured it all evened out in the end.

It was only when you brought Alphas into the equation that the normal order of things became skewed too far in the jocks' favour.

The losers consisted of Garth, Cassie, Kevin, Gilda, Dorothy, Aidan and Krissy, all of whom fell firmly into the category of 'nerd'.

Dean, therefore, had absolutely no idea why Charlie was determined to bring him into the group. Dean was by no means stupid but he knew he wasn't on an intellectual par with the other members. He'd never played a computer game in his life and the idea of cos-playing struck him as completely bizarre. (Although the irony that his current entire carefully constructed persona was, itself, an elaborate cos-play was not lost on him). The idea of gaining an entire mini-pack of instant 'friends' was an attractive prospect, though, and one he welcomed whole-heartedly. Perhaps under other circumstances he might have chosen to join a different manner of school clique (in his previous school he'd always leaned firmly towards being in the jock camp since he had always been a bit of a star athletically ) but given his current situation, staying well away from the jocks seemed his best option as he imagined that would be the direction any Alphas would gravitate.

The losers had all naturally been wary of Dean when Charlie had first introduced him to their group. The youngest and smallest of them, Kevin, had actually bolted to his feet and raced out of the door in terror in response to Dean’s arrival. It had taken a couple of days before Kevin had tentatively agreed to let Dean into their D&D club for a ‘trial period’ and even then it had only been to keep Charlie happy.

What had surprised Dean the most was discovering that his brother, Sam, had not already been inducted into the group. He would have thought the losers would have been ideal friends for Sammy, since his brother was undoubtedly the biggest nerd Dean knew. When he’d asked Charlie about it, she’d been unusually quiet for a while before reluctantly admitting that Sam was seemingly already ensconced in a group who called themselves the Specs.

“I’m surprised Sam has made friends so quickly,” he admitted. “He’s a bit stand-offish as a rule.”

“The specs aren’t ‘friends’, exactly. They’re all members of Mr Al'asfar's special advanced placement project. There’s Jake Tulley, Andrew Gallagher, Max Miller, Ansem Weems and Scott Carey and now your brother. Metatron was in the group initially but got kicked out a couple of weeks ago after he presented."

"Harsh. No wonder he's being such a dick."

"No, he didn't get thrown out for being an Alpha. He got kicked out for being a dick about it,” Charlie explained.

"So what's the advanced placement thing?"

"It's a bit weird," Charlie said. "It's supposed to be an after school club for the smartest pups, to give them a better chance to get into University, but it makes absolutely no sense because Mr Al'asfar has chosen some really improbable pupils to join it and is totally disinterested in pups like Kevin and he's a complete genius so you’d expect him to be the first pup invited into a group like that.”

"Sam's a genius too," Dean insisted loyally. "And Metatron's a dick but he's undeniably smart so I can see why he would have been invited to join before he blew it with his behaviour. I don't understand about Kevin though," he agreed. "Maybe it's a money thing. You have to be rich to go to University, but, no, that can't be it either 'cos our mom can't afford to send Sam to University so this guy Al'asfar shouldn't be encouraging Sam because he'll just end up disappointed and that's not fair."

Dean actually cringed at the thought of how Sam would react to that particular bombshell.

"I'm not convinced it's got anything to do with University at all," Charlie admitted. "I think that's just a cover story. I did think it was something to do with Alphas, since all of the Specs have that particular dickish air about them but, if so, why isn't Gordon in the group? Unless the fact Gordon is so obviously stupid that including him would expose the whole thing for what it really is. Let's see if you get invited to join and we'll know for sure."

"You think Sam is a dick?" Dean asked, frowning at the idea.

"I'm sure he's great," Charlie responded brightly, refusing to meet his eyes. "He probably just got invited because of the way he looks."

Dean nodded. Like himself, Sam was now unusually tall and muscular for his age so he could understand the assumption. Also, although he would defend Sam to the death against any detractors, he had to admit that Sam did sometimes act in ways that could be interpreted as 'dickish' to people who didn't understand Sam was simply a bit socially inept.

It didn't even particularly concern him if Charlie was right and the Specs were a way this teacher Al'asfar was trying to identify and isolate potential Alphas. It made sense, kind of, to run a special program to try and nip any future problems in the bud by offering potential young teen Alphas a support structure. What really pissed him off about the idea was if Al'asfar built some desire in Sam for an unobtainable dream.

Except...

And Dean stopped, suddenly, struck by a weird, completely out-there thought. What if it wasn't impossible for Sam? Forget the fact Al'asfar was being an irresponsible dick, what if he was unwittingly right and Sam really could go to university after all?

Dean hadn’t been born yesterday. He was perfectly aware that, as an Omegá, he was one of the rarest most valuable ‘commodities’ in the modern world. Although, given the choice, he’d prefer to live his whole life pretending to be a Beta, the fact was he could only do so if he pretended to be a Beta who ‘might’ become an Alpha (and that was a complicated enough concept to give him a headache) and that was a time-limited opportunity. He had, at best, two or three years before he had no choice except to accept his mom’s offer to get him over a border into a Pack Land.

From what little he understood, if he got there under his own steam rather than via an auction he wouldn’t automatically become the property of a Primá immediately but he couldn’t imagine it would be long before he was claimed by one. He didn’t know how the Primáres worked out amongst themselves who got to be the lucky winner but, one way or another, he was inevitably going to end up as the trophy bride of some Alpha styling himself as a tribal ‘king’. And, as he understood it, the lucky winner was obliged to pay handsomely for the privilege.

Sure, the Packs called the transaction a bride-price and pretended it was some boon of gratitude to an Omegá’s family for the ‘gift’ of their treasured pup but Dean figured the Betas definitely were more accurate in calling it a business transaction because, basically, it equated to a shed-load of money being paid over in exchange for ownership of a sex-slave.

Whilst the idea of being a slave of any description was anathema to him, Dean wasn’t naive. He knew how the world worked. His Uncle Bobby’s yard was filled full of discarded cars of all makes and descriptions but not one of them was a Ferrari or a Bugatti. When people paid a lot of money for things, they valued them a hell of a lot more than if they got them cheap or free. Dean was sure his Mom would rather cut her hand off than accept any money for him, but Dean didn’t see it the same way. If the Pack got him for ‘free’ maybe they’d see him as less valuable, more disposable, like the Fords and Chevys scattered around Bobby’s yard.

So if Dean Winchester was going to have to sell his soul, he wasn’t going to do so at a bargain-basement price. If there was no way of escaping a future as the property of whatever Alpha asshole had a big-enough dick to call himself a Primá and think it was a-ok to own another human being, then Dean was definitely going to make sure that asshole paid through the nose for the privilege. His mom was damned well going to live like a queen for the rest of her life and his brother ‘could’ go to University. In fact Sam could do anything he damned well wanted because if Dean was going to be stuck with his fate, he’d make sure at least his family benefitted from his own misfortune.

~

Gordon Walker was an asshole. Dean realised that truism the moment he met him, and his assholery, whilst obviously aided by his designation, did not seem to be a particular aspect of his being an Alpha but rather the very core of his nature.

Yet, despite the obvious truth of everyone's assertions that Gordon was no intellectual, the Alpha was not 'stupid'. He had a low-brow cunning that made him smarter than Metatron, in Dean's opinion, because on meeting Dean and making the same assumption as everyone else that he was almost certainly going to be presenting as an Alpha at some point, instead of raising a challenge to him, Gordon had the smarts to pause and consider the implications to himself before reacting.

What made him an asshole, then, was the fact he immediately assumed that Dean would become his ally and the reason he made that assumption was that Gordon Walker was so supremely confident of his position that he was simply incapable of believing Dean might not be interested in the 'honor' he was offering.

He actually used the phrase "Don't you know who I am?" when Dean told him he had absolutely no interest in being his side-kick and since Dean had no idea who Walker might 'be', the conversation was pretty much left there with both of them left confused, though for totally different reasons.

Gordon was confident enough to assume Dean would change his mind soon enough so let him go unchallenged. Dean, pleased to have survived the encounter unscathed, was content enough to leave him with that illusion.

As Dean pointed out to Charlie later, although the maxim that size didn't equate to strength was only true in adult Alphas, he wasn't absolutely certain that the couple of inches of height and maybe twenty pounds he had on the older pup would be enough to adequately protect him in a fight against an actual, presented Alpha.

"It probably would," Charlie said thoughtfully. "Even though Gordon is slowly developing some true Alpha strength, he's far from maturity. Besides, when you consider who he is, it would be surprising if he's ever had a fight in his life. There's a huge difference between his bullying a skinny pup like Garth and him actually having a real physical confrontation with someone."

"Who is he exactly? He seemed to think I should be impressed."

"He isn't anyone, at least he wasn't before last month. Now, though, everything's changed for him and no-one is very happy about it, except for Gordon himself. You must have heard of The Walker Corporation, it's the biggest employer in South Dakota. I believe over 70% of the Betas in this city are either employed directly or indirectly by WalCo."

"WalCo as in WalCo burgers?" Dean said, reluctantly impressed.

"WalCo don't just sell burgers, they run the beef ranches, the abattoirs and the meat packaging companies. Obviously the land itself is still Pack owned but the actual processing plants and stuff are Beta owned by the Walker family. Gordon is not only the youngest of five sons, but was an unexpected pup whelped nearly fifteen years after the other four. His oldest brother, Michael, has been running WalCo for over ten years, since their parents were killed in a car accident. Michael is an excellent CEO and is regularly featured in Forbes. Do you understand where I'm going with this sad and boring tale?"

Dean considered the facts and groaned. "Of course. The Alpha inheritance laws."

Charlie grinned. "Exactly. Three months ago, Gordon, the youngest and least promising of the Walker scions suddenly and unexpectedly presented as an Alpha and that means he can disinherit his brothers and claim WalCo for himself. You don't need much imagination to see how well that has gone down. Not only with his family but with the whole city council. Hell, I think the whole state is probably in shock over the thought that an Alpha will take over and, more worryingly, that Gordon might decide to make an alliance with a Pack to consolidate his power base and that would pass WalCo into Pack oversight."

"But you said he became someone a month ago, rather than three months ago when he actually presented."

Charlie laughed. "I should have known you'd have caught that. What highly significant thing happened last month?"

"The Conclave?" Dean guessed.

"Yup, and that's changed things why?"

"This feels more like a pop quiz than a conversation," Dean grumbled but played along. He thought furiously for a few minutes and suddenly the penny dropped. "Gordon is staying in Sioux Falls instead of moving out to a big city."

Charlie nodded.

"But that would only have bought them a couple of years," Dean pointed out. "Odds are he would have eventually come back and claimed his inheritance anyway."

"You'd think so, but that rarely proved to be the case. Very few Alphas ever returned home after their time in the cities, even if they had good financial reasons to return. The thing is that Alphas are very much pack animals, and I mean that in a small 'p' kind of way, not Pack, just pack. Not many of them are interested in becoming a sole Alpha living in a Beta community after they've experienced being with a group of their peers. That's why so many of them go into law enforcement or join the military. And those are high risk careers."

"You're saying Gordon's family were hoping he'd get his head blown off in some foreign war and never return? That's pretty sick and not a little improbable. I don't think modern warfare has a particularly high casualty rate," Dean argued.

Charlie shrugged. "Maybe the odds wouldn't have been that high in the normal course of events but I think you'd find it more probable than you imagine. Out of the 267 Alpha fatalities of the most recent Asiatic conflict, over 230 of them were Alphas who had inheritances to claim. Peculiarly enough, the soldiers who get chosen for the most dangerous missions seem to be those who have the most to lose. You could almost imagine the Beta government actually planned it that way."

"Shit," Dean breathed. "If you're right, everything's even more fucked up than I imagined. I thought the local City council were going to be pissed at the cost of having to supply brothels for Alphas like Gordon but that isn't even significant, really, is it?"

"Not compared to the possible financial implications of an asshole like Gordon possibly running WalCo into the ground or even, God-forbid, letting the assets pass into Pack ownership."

"How likely is that?"

"Well, just consider Gordon's reaction to you," Charlie said. "His instinct wasn't to challenge you, it was to try to convince you to join with him. That definitely suggests he has a pack mentality not a lone wolf one. So the odds are that he would see Pack allegiance as an attractive option."

"The Betas aren't going to stand for that, are they?"

"I definitely anticipate some nefarious plan is brewing deep inside WalCo even as we speak, but who knows what might actually happen. And then I have to wonder how many other 'Gordons' there are out there and whether all of this is going to end up in a total shit-storm."

~

With a name like Azazel Al'asfar, Dean had expected the teacher to have an exotic cast to his features but the middle-aged Beta was perfectly ordinary in appearance except, perhaps for a peculiar intensity in his eyes.

Like Gordon, Azazel seemed completely confounded when Dean politely refused the offer to join 'his' particular clique.

"I'm pretty sure Advanced Placement classes are not my thing," Dean said politely. "In fact, with respect, I'd rather claw my eyes out with a rusty spoon than volunteer to spend extra time in a classroom."

"I think you might be pleasantly surprised how interesting my classes are," Azazel replied easily, though his posture had stiffened at the unexpected refusal. "You'd be surprised how many opportunities could be on offer to you should you avail yourself of higher education."

"I think it's irresponsible of you to promise stuff you can't deliver," Dean challenged. "Everyone knows it costs a fortune to go to University."

"You're brighter than you look," Azazel said, and it didn't sound like a compliment. "What you are unaware of, however, is there is a small government fund available to support exceptional pupils and I am one of a select few with the authority to nominate candidates for that selection process."

"Exceptional potentially Alpha pupils?" Dean asked sweetly.

Azazel narrowed his eyes with clear irritation. "Amongst other things. Clearly you don't know I have just accepted two female Betas into my group, Ruby and Lilith. They also show a degree of unique intelligence that our government would be pleased to support. Admittedly, the fact you appear as though you may present as an Alpha is of interest to me since I am at pains to prove that advanced intelligence is not merely confined to those of the Beta designation. I believe, given the correct opportunities, anyone of any designation can rise to intellectual heights."

Dean found himself suddenly second-guessing his original assumptions. It was entirely possible that Azazel was telling the truth and his Advanced Placement classes truly were born from an altruistic desire to aid Alphas rather than to police them.

Even so, Dean had no interest in joining the Specs. For one thing, being in such close proximity with all the pups likely to present as Alphas would put his own behaviour under scrutiny he wanted to avoid. For another, he really would rather stick a spoon in his eyes than do extra studying. But his biggest and best reason for not becoming a Spec was that it seemed Sam had finally found his feet inside a clique and, since the Specs were all about smarts, Sam should be able to thrive within the group. The last thing Sam needed was his older brother joining and stealing his limelight.


	42. Chapter Thirty Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a very brief summary of this chapter at the bottom if you would prefer to skip over it, given that Dean is still a child by our reckoning (although by the nature of his designation he is not underage within this universe).

Shab-e Yalda, the longest night of the year, typically fell in the third week of Diezmes in the Northern Hemisphere. Many people simply referred to it as Mid-winter and it happened to be, by co-incidence perhaps, the time when Mary Winchester had first expected the birth of her oldest son; before he had unreasonably chosen to remain in her womb for a full further four weeks.

Everybody celebrated Shab-e Yalda. Even the Church Of Abel accepted it as the most holy of times; the night when the lunar presence of the Omadonna shone longest on the world. At that time of year the moon rose fat, full and lazy from low on the Eastern horizon and moved slow and sluggish across the night sky, its usual silvery-white surface blushed almost red. Traditionally it was the last celebration before true winter, when animals were slaughtered so they didn't have to be fed through the harshest months and the Packs would gather and feast together.

It was also the time most pups were conceived, mainly because there was very little else to do on long winter nights but that, naturally, had become linked in people's minds with the fat, fecund moon that shone above like the open Flores of the ever-fertile Omadonna.

And so Shab-e Yalda was the primary feast day of the Omadonna and those people who were not followers of the heretical Ablest theology chose to show their appreciation of the Holy mother with offerings to his earthly representives the Omegáres.

For Dean, the experience of his first Shab-e Yalda since his presentation five months previously was weirdly bizarre.

Because the celebration started at moonrise, he was at home when it began and was surprised firstly by a present from his mother; a handwoven basket filled with the traditional gifts of fruit and clothing, though she knew him well enough that the fruit was provided pre-cooked and wrapped in pastry. He was less thrilled by the clothing, feeling initially horrified, even betrayed, to receive the gift of a traditional Omegá 'dress' in sheer emerald green silk.

But when she explained her rationale for the gift his initial puzzled anger turned to curiosity and even, perhaps, a slightly eager anticipation. It was true he had sometimes looked a little overlong at the pictures of Daniel, wondering how it would feel to drape himself in silk as fine as spiderwebs and feel the slide of that material against his flesh rather than the rough, unforgiving fabric of Beta jeans and plaid shirts. His skin was, as she reminded him in a soft private whisper, so increasingly sensitive these days that sometimes he returned home from school, raced to his room, locked the door and stripped himself bare for hours at a time, unable to face the idea of reclothing himself until the maddening itching had abated. Perhaps, he allowed, in the privacy of his room he might learn how it felt to embrace his designation at least a little.

Bobby's gift was even more appallingly embarrassing even though Dean knew it was simply the honoured traditional offering of an Alpha Guardian to a young Omegá in his charge.

Bobby seemed to believe so too, given the extreme flush on his face as he handed over the beautifully wrapped box and failed to make eye contact as he muttered awkwardly that it was probably best Dean opened the box in private.

Even Sam, who had become worryingly distant and secretive during the last four months, choosing increasingly to spend as much of his free time as possible with his new 'friends' and seemingly having little time for his brother as a result, had still made the effort to make a gift for him and made a point of thrusting it into Dean's hands even as he raced out of the door to spend the early evening of the celebration with the Specs, rather than his own family. The gift was a peculiar amulet, a horned-headed oddly malevolent representation of the All-Father which made Dean blush with mortification even as he thrummed with delight that his otherwise seemingly indifferent brother had cared to gift something so thoughtful on this the Omadonna's special night.

Dean had seen illustrations of the All-Father in this almost demonic form within the scriptures he had read as a pup. He understood that the horns were not a true representation of the All-Father's actual likeness but, rather, an artistic interpretation of the All-Father's sexuality. The thick, ridged horns on either side of the icon's head were the artist's way of illustrating how God had dual sexual organs, designed to simultaneously impale both passages contained within the Omadonna's Flores.

Even as he squirmed with embarrassment to receive such a gift from his younger brother, Dean couldn't help but wonder, with a shiver of excited dread, how that might actually feel. He knew, from the unashamedly detailed literature provided by the Department of Public Health that Omegáres in rut houses were not held in those places as 'prisoners' (save from the obvious truth that there was no-where they could legally go to if they left, which made the idea of them leaving a moot point anyway) and were not physically bound in any way to make them receptive to the attentions of the Alphas.

What made an Omegá helpless to resist being mounted by an Alpha was their own sexual biology. If an Omegáren vagina was filled, their entire Flores was consequently wide open, leaving clear unrestricted access to their rear passage, so by choosing to seat themselves on the particular pegged Omegá seats provided in the rut houses, they literally placed themselves in a way that exposed that open place between their buttocks and presented it in clear invitation.

It was, the DPH insisted, perfectly obvious then that an Omegá enjoyed and even craved the attention of the rutting Alphas because no one was 'forcing' them to sit on the pegs.

Dean wasn't the least bit convinced by that argument, though he could see how it might allow an average Beta to sleep well at night. He'd never forgotten how his body had betrayed him when he'd been gagged. He could only suspect some similar mechanism came into play should something press deep inside his vagina, the way the gag had pressed inside his throat. That suspicion only seemed confirmed by his Pops' determination that he should be 'pegged' before any attempt to transport him. Dean could only assume that should he ever attempt to satisfy the hunger that throbbed constantly in his groin, he might unwittingly unleash a ravening beast that was incapable of ever feeling satisfied.

The thought he might ever choose to seat himself in such a way and somehow become so lost in his own pleasure that he was totally uncaring of whether a stream of rutting Alphas were also entering him from behind made him shudder with horror. And yet, conversely, the idea always sent a jolt of 'something' through his groin, some charge of excitement, perhaps. A primal, instinctive shiver of anticipation that seemed to dismiss his fear and horror and replace it with a thrumming, aching sensation of a literal hunger that demanded satisfaction and would only continue to protest more vehemently the longer he insisted on denying it.

He was not a beast to choose sensation over reason, he constantly reminded himself. His body was the vessel for his soul, not its master. It was his mind that ruled his behaviour, not his animal instincts.

And always, his mind had triumphed and reason had been dominant and the attempted treachery of his body had been defeated.

Yet on that night of Shab-e Yalda, when Dean retreated to his bedroom to stash his unexpected gifts safely away for later contemplation, he paused, considered and thought, perhaps, he might at least choose to wear Sam's present in public. A symbol of the rampant All-Father was a perfectly legitimate necklace for an 'Alpha' to wear publicly, which meant it was actually a really clever gift on Sam's part. So he imagined Sam would be gratified to return home from his party and see the necklace lying snug around Dean's throat.

It was probably simply the sensation of cold metal against his skin but Dean shivered as he fastened the necklace and that momentary tingle somehow exacerbated the already irritating itching he was feeling from spending hours at school that day wrapped in the fabric of his Beta clothing. Even his jeans, soft and faded from multiple washings, felt rough and scratchy and suddenly, that tingling itch felt unbearable and he stripped, quickly, urgently, until he was nude save for Sam's necklace.

Usually, just the process of stripping was enough relief but, maybe because the silk was calling to him from his mother's basket, he had the sudden urge to discover whether it would truly feel as soothing against his skin as he imagined. So he slipped into the 'dress', letting it hang open like a negligé, feeling the fabric skimming his shoulders and back and thighs like feathery strokes of translucent fairy wings. He shivered with pleasure as the fabric whispered against his buttocks and slid across the back of his thighs.

It was no wonder, he abruptly decided, that Daniel always was pictured looking so pleased with himself. Nothing had prepared him for just how gratefully his skin would reward him for being treated with such gentleness and, for a moment, Dean regretted that he would never dare to wear such an outfit in front of another's eyes.

Suddenly emboldened, lost perhaps in the strange spell cast by the moonlight spilling into his bedroom and the unfamiliar thrumming of pleasure from his skin, in the privacy of his bedroom, with his door locked and bolted, Dean unwrapped the present from Bobby to reveal, firstly, a beautifully carved hand-made redwood box.

Inside the box, resting on a padded bed of blood red velveteen, was an equally hand-carved maplewood peg.

The contents were exactly what he had expected, given that Bobby had merely been respecting a tradition, but Dean had not been prepared for the visible love and attention that Bobby had bestowed on what was, after all, merely a gift that offered a necessary nod to religious convention.

Unlike the monstrosity produced by Dr Hodget, this peg was relatively small. It was about fourteen inches long, perhaps three inches in diameter at its widest end and it tapered on the narrow end to a rounded point. The peg was planed smooth for a third of its length but then carved into thick ringed grooves and ridges on the rest, ending in a carved bulbous ball.

Also unlike the peg Dean had seen previously, this one did not make him stiffen in terror. Despite the embarrassed flush in his heated cheeks as he imagined Bobby's hands spending hours carving the thing he was holding, his immediate response to the peg was a sudden deep stabbing pain between his thighs like a sudden onslaught of ravenous hunger, though the sudden empty ache was located considerably lower than his stomach. And even as he identified that feeling, he felt a hot, wet gush as he felt his Flores relax, unclenching its lips like a mouth opening in greedy invitatIon.

It wasn't just a want that suddenly awakened in him but an actual _need._ He needed to know how it felt to place the peg inside him, to feel it slide between the lips of his Flores into his heated depths.

Perhaps it was the red-hued light of the full moon that bathed his room, or the whisper of sensation playing over his skin as the spider silk caressed his limbs, or even the malevolent glare of the icon hanging around his neck, but for the first time he felt the alien nature of his Flores and accepted its presence with curiosity rather than fear, allowed desire to replace repulsion, chose to finally face the difference wrought by his presentation instead of remaining in ignorant denial.

He lay back on his bed, his back cradled by the soft silk of his dress, raising his knees, opening his thighs, and ran his fingers lightly over the soft wet flesh that pulsed hungrily against his fingertips, feeling his Flores fill with blood and expand widely as its internal petals engorged and swelled to ripeness.

Without even consciously making the decision to do so, he pressed the tip of the peg against the dark centre of the 'flower', tentatively pushing it inside, waiting for a tension or resistance that was not to be found. An inch, then two disappeared, gliding smoothly through the wet heat of his body, so he pushed a little harder, letting another inch, and then another slide inside until all of the smooth wood was embedded. Then he hesitated a moment, the first ridge groove resting outside his Flores, before giving the peg enough pressure to slide the first ridge past his labial petals.

Dean gasped with shock as his Flores caught firmly onto the ridge and pulled the peg inside of its own volition, the petals pulsing and writhing in waves as they captured the peg and began dragging it inside, catching ridge after ridge, as though two cogs had meshed together, and with a swiftness that was almost terrifying, the entire length of the peg was literally sucked inside him until nothing remained except the bulbous ball at its head.

For a moment he just lay there stunned, disbelieving that the entire peg was now inside him, its full length simply devoured by his Flores and, though he felt full, it all felt oddly anti-climatic. There was no pain, not even any pleasure except for, perhaps, a sense of relief that the hungry maw was momentarily satiated.

But then, as he lay there, something seemed to happen inside him, deep inside him, as he felt what he could only assume were his own internal muscles beginning to pulse and ripple over the peg. He could only lie there, writhing helplessly, as a rising crescendo of shock waves thrummed through his body, making his toes curl and his teeth clench as somehow, impossibly, his body acted of its own volition to take pleasure from its invader, as though his insides were shifting and rolling against the peg, sucking and squeezing against the grooves and ridges and wresting its own satisfaction from the shape and form of the intricately carved wood.

He could only lie imprisoned by pleasure, whimpering in shocked delight as the intensity of the sensations held him locked in their thrall. It seemed impossible that any flesh and blood human could ever survive the experience of mounting him, because it felt like his hungry body would rip a fleshly invader off at the root with its greedy devouring of every sensation that could be wrested from within.

It took perhaps an hour before finally, literally sweat-drenched and gasping for breath, he finally felt his body's orgasmic spasms easing to slow, steady pulses and then gradually easing into exhausted stillness, leaving him shattered and stunned.

And so, on Shab-e yarda, under the fierce glare of a fat, fecund moon, Dean finally understood for the first time what it truly meant to be Omegá.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some graphic masturbation by an underage character. 
> 
> Dean receives a gift from his brother and learns a surprising and very important facet of Omegáren biology. The two facts may not be unrelated.


	43. Chapter Forty

By the time of the celebration of the vernal equinox, Ostara, two more Alphas had presented at the school. Both were members of the Specs, Max and Jake, and both took to their new designations with some glee to the dismay of the Losers. Particularly affected was poor Garth who, somehow, always found himself the butt of Alpha bullying.

Both Alphas remained in the Specs but were also drawn into Gordon Walker's direct influence, presumably because as long term residents of Sioux Falls they fully appreciated the potential impact he could have on their future. Although Gordon was never invited to join Azazel’s advanced placement course, so could not become a member of the Specs, it became rapidly clear to all that a brand new clique was developing in the school that consisted only of presented Alphas, since even Metatron gravitated towards the three and soon the four Alphas had formed their own little ‘pack’ that operated independently of whatever other affiliations they claimed.

In fact, as evidence of Gordon’s lack of imagination, he actually chose to call his group of Alphas ‘The Pack’.

Although Gordon had still made no move towards disinheriting his older brothers, something made difficult by his age, but not legally _impossible_ , it was quite obvious that his family were buying themselves time by securing his goodwill. Gordon now sported a Rolex on his wrist and, despite only being sixteen, was the proud owner of a brand new Mercedes convertible.

Maybe, Dean thought to himself uncharitably, the Walker family were hoping Gordon would wrap the overpowered sports car around a tree.

Either way, the car gave Gordon an additional cool factor with ‘The Pack’, so the four Alphas were frequently found hanging together in the car park, leering at Beta girls and sneaking crafty cigarettes.

During the nine months since his presentation, Gordon had attained enough height and strength to be one of the physically largest pups in school. He had still shown no evidence of any preternatural strength, however, so his physical threat was still constrained to those pupils who were smaller than him.

Fortunately for Dean, his own growth had continued and at fifteen he was barely shy of six foot. Given that an average male Beta rarely exceeded five foot eight, Dean's height clearly set him apart from the norm and firmly established the general assumption that he, too, would present as an Alpha, sooner or later.

Oddly, though, it was Metatron who was proving to be the most problematic of the four presented Alphas, even though he was still barely five foot six.

Despite being the youngest and smallest of the Alphas, Metatron appeared to be maturing at a far more rapid rate. His temper, never the mildest at the best of times, was beginning to spiral out of control and the general consensus amongst the other pupils was that Metatron was rapidly approaching the time of his development when a display of actual rut rage was a distinct probability.

This was the point at which the school would previously have approached Metatron's parents to suggest it was probably time for him to be excluded from the school and encouraged to relocate to a larger City.

As it was, the atmosphere of the school was becoming increasingly strained with the parents of several Beta girls actually picketing at the gates to try to force the school to do something, although no one was quite clear what form that 'something' should take.

It was, perhaps surprisingly given that he'd previously thrown Metatron out of his advanced placement scheme, Azazel Al'asfar who devised a solution to the problem by suggesting the implementation of a form of gender apartheid within the classroom system.

Whilst it was physically possible for a Beta boy to be raped by an Alpha teen, in practice it was a highly improbable occurrence. The particular hormonal influences that drove young Alphas into displays of rut rage were driven by a mating, breeding urge, not a desire for mere sexual satisfaction. Thusly, it was the scent of a fertile womb that sparked the rage, not any perceived physical attractiveness. Even the plainest, most unfortunately featured female was, consequently, an object of greater lust to an Alpha teen than even the most beautiful of males.

Azazel, therefore, proposed that the school revert to the old-fashioned principle of segregating the sexes, which had, in prior times, been the way Free Betas had handled the problem before the modern practice of rut houses and centralised brothels had been devised.

The idea was not a unique one. Across the country, as more and more of the major Cities followed Chicago's example and refused the relocation of teen Alphas into their midst, many towns and small cities were giving serious consideration to creating entirely gender segregated schools although there was a lot of political grumbling over the cost of enacting such a principle simply to control the proclivities of a very small minority of the population.

The more obvious solution, as Charlie pointed out acerbically, would be to simply isolate Alphas from the general population until such time as they could control their own dicks but that was a political hot-potato that no-one was willing to handle.

Any system of apartheid that specifically discriminated against Alphas was fraught with danger. Firstly, it was highly probable that the Packs would react badly to the idea and use it as an excuse to flex their power against the Free Betas. Secondly, it smacked too much of following a strict Ablest doctrine and the majority of Free Betas were still opposed to the idea of openly following the teachings of the Church of Abel and thirdly, and probably more importantly, it was seen as possible financial suicide.

Given that the Betas had failed on numerous occasions to repeal the Alpha Inheritance Laws because they were based on too many inter-related other fundamental principles of un-repealed Pack Law to successfully isolate and overturn them, any solution to the controlling of Alpha teens that caused offence to the Alphas themselves would inevitably cause those Alphas to reject the idea of education altogether.

An Alpha such as Gordon Walker, for instance, would be highly likely to eschew school entirely and decide, instead, to simply claim ownership of WalCo at the age of sixteen. The idea of such an economically important company falling into the hands of an irresponsible pup was a hard enough pill to swallow. The idea of it being run by an _uneducated_ pup was unthinkable.

The problem posed by Gordon’s potential inheritance was not an isolated one. The most successful Betas were, as a rule, those who carried the recessive Alpha gene in their genome. Although no-one knew for certain what peculiar combination of genetic factors caused certain Betas to strive to be the leaders of their society, there was no avoiding the fact that more Alphas were born into those powerful dynastic Beta families than mere statistical probability should allow.

Consequently, the government were exceedingly wary of acting openly against the Alpha designation when an unreasonably high proportion of Alphas were born into the families controlling what little independent financial wealth the Beta society owned.

So rather than isolating the Alphas, Azazel proposed instead that the school should follow the new government guidelines and segregate the females. This naturally caused huge offence to the females themselves who had spent centuries fighting the cause of feminism, winning themselves suffrage and equal rights only to have that, effectively, ripped away from them overnight.

But, then again, upsetting the Beta females’ sensibilities didn’t have the same financial implications so was considered an acceptable compromise by the government.

"It's fucking disgusting," Charlie snarled, when the Losers met up on the first Farasday evening after the school had announced its new policy. "After Ostara Break, female pupils are going to be segregated into separate classes. Supposedly for our own protection."

"I don't mind," Gilda countered. "My Sire said he was going to pull me out of school entirely if something like this didn't happen. Metatron really scares me. It's the way he looks at me and pointedly sniffs and flems every time I walk I into a room. He's a creepy little bastard and he makes my skin crawl."

"But it's not fair, Gilda," Kristy insisted passionately. "I told Mr. Rogers that Max Miller was starting to bother me, always making a point of sitting next to me in class and following me around the school corridors like a creeper and do you know what he said to me? That maybe I should give some 'consideration' to the way I was dressing myself. Like it was my fault."

"Well, you do have a habit of wearing _really_ short skirts," Kevin pointed out, blushing a little.

"So what?" Dean demanded angrily. "Krissy should be able to walk down the corridor stark naked if she wants, without that being seen as an 'invitation'. If a male can't control himself that is _his_ problem, not hers."

"Well said," Charlie agreed with a grin of approval. "Women have fought and even died for the right to be seen as equals. This whole idea of us having to dress modestly so we don't 'tempt' males is just antiquated bollocks. Besides, it's a crap argument anyway because Alphas don't give a shit what girls look like. It's all about the smell. Krissy could come to school wearing a full length burlap sack and Max would still be sniffing after her like a horny hound dog."

“I think Metatron is more of an immediate issue than Max Miller,” Dorothy said, frowning with annoyed worry. “He lost his temper in my Math class a couple of days ago, punched his desk and the whole thing splintered apart like an explosion. I think he’s gotten his full Alpha strength already.”

“But he’s only fourteen,” Dean said, confused. “How is that possible? Gordon’s sixteen and the size of a small house but he isn’t showing any unnatural strength.”

“Pot meet kettle,” Charlie snickered. “I think you’re the tallest, strongest pup in school, though your brother’s giving you a run for your money, and you haven’t even presented yet!”

“Dean might be the tallest, but he definitely isn’t the strongest,” Kevin said. “I was in that math class too and I saw what Metatron did. He didn’t just break the desk, he decimated it.”

“I think the reason he’s developed so quickly is that he’s small,” Charlie suggested. “It’s probably a survival mechanism. Short Alphas probably have to mature quickly to survive in a Pack. If they don’t rapidly reach a point where size is irrelevant, I can’t imagine they would last long.”

“Either that or the fact he sits there stewing in constant rage over being stuck in his stumpy little body has kicked his hormones into hyperdrive,” Kevin snickered.

“Whatever the reason, if he’s that mature developmentally then he is probably going to hit rut rage any minute now,” Gilda worried, “and even if they segregate the classes here, what’s going to stop him going after people outside of school? My parents don’t have a car and they don’t have the money to buy one. They work at WalCo and with all the uncertainty there at the moment, they don’t dare take out a loan. So I have to walk to school and back. I don’t want to be out there, walking down the street alone every day. You all know that Metatron has a thing for me.”

“Then you don’t walk alone,” Dean said firmly. “You don’t live that far from me. We’ll walk to school and back together.”

Gilda smiled at him gratefully but shook her head sadly. “You’d just get hurt, Dean. You might be a lot bigger than him, and he might not have challenged you lately, but Metatron isn’t going to let you stand in his way if he’s in a ‘rage’.”

“There’s still more safety in numbers,” Charlie said. “Dean’s right about you not walking alone, and I don’t live that far from either of you, so I think we should all walk to school and back together. Metatron isn’t going to approach you if you’re in a group.”

“That would be great,” Gilda agreed, with a soft look in Charlie’s direction.

Charlie flushed in response, confirming a suspicion Dean had held for a while that it wasn’t only Metatron with a ‘thing’ for the pretty blonde Beta girl. Still, it didn’t look like Charlie’s affections were falling on similarly fallow ground.

“Speaking of your brother,” Charlie said, returning her attention to Dean. “Are the rumors true?”

“What rumors?”

“That he’s ‘off sick’,” she said, emphasising the words with naff two fingered gesturing.

“He’s got the flu,” Dean agreed.

“Is that what they call it these days?” Dorothy laughed.

Dean frowned with confusion. “It’s just the flu,” he repeated with a shrug.

“Cute, but dumb,” Dorothy replied, archly.

“Leave him alone,” Charlie growled. “He probably doesn’t want to talk about it.”

“Talk about what?” Dean demanded.

“That your brother is presenting first,” Kevin interrupted. “That’s gotta hurt.”

Dean blinked in genuine confusion. He understood what they were trying to say but, quite apart from the fact he was sure Sam wasn’t any more of an Alpha than he was because the odds of John Winchester siring an Omegá _and_ an Alpha surely had to be astronomically low, the fact remained that Dean had suffered through a presentation (unbeknownst to his friends) and it sure as hell hadn’t felt like a bad case of the flu to him. More like having his insides eviscerated by a blunt object.

And Sam wasn’t just pretending to have the flu, he really was the epitome of migraine-ridden, red-nosed, sinus-blocked, croaky voiced, grumpy, virus-riddled misery. Sam was not a good patient. Stoic was definitely not a description that would be applied to him. Sam didn’t just have man-flu, he currently embodied a whole new definition of loud male suffering that Dean was privately calling ‘Sam-flu’.

“It’s the flu,” he insisted again.

“Headache, blocked nose, sore swollen throat, raging fever?” Dorothy demanded.

Dean nodded.

“He’s presenting,” she said, with a firm nod.

“That’s not how presentation physically works,” Dean blurted from experience, then froze in horror, but fortunately no-one seemed to understand the source of his surety.

“Of course it is. What happens to an Alpha? They grow a full set of wicked Alpha teeth underneath their Beta teeth, and the pressure of those buried fangs pushing upwards under the gumline before they actually emerge must feel like his whole head is going to explode. Of course he’s got a sore nose and throat. His jaw bone is splintering, his gums are filling with fangs that are going to burst out into his mouth at any minute like a volcano going off. Must hurt like fuck,” Dorothy said, with an almost gleeful expression at the thought.

Dean suddenly felt so sick he thought he might actually faint. Perhaps if he hadn’t been sitting, he would have collapsed because the blood was rushing through his head suddenly so quickly that he could barely hear anything except the thundering of his own heart.

Sam was an Alpha.

Sam was an _Alpha_.

Sam **_was_** an Alpha.

It explained so much about his behaviour, the changes in his personality, the terrible, awful temper that had developed in such a formerly sweet pup.

And yet, even as it explained so much, it beggared any belief.

How was it possible? How could John Winchester, Alpha, have sired an Alpha pup?

Well, how did he sire an Omegá? A voice whispered in his head.

What did it mean? Because it had to mean something. There had to be a reason. There had to be some explanation for the inexplicable happening twice in their family. Some genetic abnormality. Some physical cause. Something that could be justified by the simple application of scientific research to the problem.

Because the alternative was truly unthinkable.


	44. Chapter Forty One

Dean practically ran all the way home, only slowing periodically whenever he was so short for breath that it physically hurt too much to continue his rapid pace. He was built for brief sprinting power, bursts of speed rather than maintaining a lengthy steady pace, so the last half of his journey was punctuated by burning lungs, aching calves and a metallic coppery taste of blood in his mouth.

Even so, it wasn't exhaustion that caused him to slow to a walk for the final hundred yards or so to Bobby's front door. Although he'd been driven by urgency to race home from the moment realisation had struck him about Sam, when he actually saw the house his eagerness to confront the truth was suddenly overshadowed by dread. The house that had felt like a haven for months now sat like a squat, forbidding beast, its front door no longer promising a sanctuary but rather the entrance to some personal hellish nightmare.

And, for a moment, Dean actually considered turning around and racing off in another direction as though by refusing to confront the truth he would, somehow, find a way to avoid or even change fate. For there was no denying that there seemed something more than chance or coincidence at play in his life. Dean had the weirdest conviction that events were afoot that were so out of his control that he felt almost like an actor in a play, a marionette perhaps, imagining some degree of self-determination only to discover that every step he took was really being controlled by the invisible strings of some hidden puppet master.

He had no factual basis for that conviction and, yet, he couldn't shake the feeling that someone or something had already predetermined the outcome should he enter the house and that the only way to avoid that fate was to turn in his tracks and refuse to play his role in the drama.

Or, maybe, he told himself, he was simply scared.

Crossing the threshold of that doorway and confirming what he already knew in his gut to be true could destroy everything and he had a number of selfish reasons to reject that particular reality.

His over-riding fear was that his mother had knowingly deceived him and that, if it proved to be true, would be the most shattering truth of all.

And that, more than anything, gave him the strength and determination to overcome his hesitation. He had to know, for sure, whether his mother had broken faith with him or was, like himself, just an innocent player in someone else's sorry drama.

He trusted her, he decided suddenly. He absolutely, completely and unreservedly trusted his mother but sadly he wasn't similarly certain about either Uncle Bobby or his brother and that meant she was alone in that house with two Alphas who might possibly be a danger to her and Dean was damned if he was going to allow her to remain that way.

And, that decided, he shoved his own fear deep down inside himself and stepped through the door and found...

...nothing.

Well, nothing out of the ordinary, anyway, and that was enough to halt his footsteps as confusion momentarily replaced conviction.

Mary was at the stove preparing supper, Bobby was at the table working his way through a pile of bills and his brother, Sam, was also sitting at the table, his shoulders draped in a wooden blanket, his flushed face lowered over a steaming mug of what appeared to be hot lemon. The tableau was so normal, so mundane, that Dean found himself so wrong-footed that, for an instant, he was flooded with the relieved conviction that he had been wrong to listen to his friends and Sam just had flu, and all of this had just been a stupid, childish overreaction on his part.

And then Sam looked up and sniffed dramatically. Dean could have dismissed it as nothing more than an attempt to clear his blocked nostrils, had it not been accompanied by a flash of red in Sam's unusually dark eyes. It could have been a trick of the light, a reflection cast from the glare through the window of the lowering evening sun but Sam's eyes themselves no longer seemed their usual hazel brown but instead appeared the deep, intense colour of bitter chocolate.

"What's up, jerk?" Sam croaked, and the teeth that flashed were not shark-like and that should have convinced him, surely, that everything was fine yet Dean somehow knew, beyond any doubt, that Alpha fangs were poised in readiness within his brother's jaw, just biding their time a little longer before revealing themselves.

Does he know? Dean asked himself as he looked at the apparently guileless expression on his brother's face. Does he understand what's happening to him or is he truly as ignorant as he's pretending to be?

He couldn't tear his eyes from his brother's face, couldn't stop glaring at him suspiciously even though he knew he probably looked as feverish and ill with his weird behaviour as Sam did himself. It was like a horror movie, he thought wildly, where if the protagonist looked away for even a second, a monster would suddenly burst into life and devour him. And he knew it was crazy and overly dramatic and beyond any reasonable probability that Sam might choose that very moment to complete his presentation by opening the maw of his mouth at the very instant his Beta teeth shattered outwards to be instantly replaced with multitudinous fangs and yet, still, he couldn't look away. Just in case.

Something skittered over Sam's expression, something sly and knowing, and his lip curled with the faintest trace of dark humor at the oddness of Dean's behaviour and, that's when Dean understood that Sam did know. Just as he himself had known during his own presentation because, regardless of his own ignorance of being an Omegá at the onset, during the course of it he had come to a fast unmistakable realisation of what was actually happening to him, even whilst he was crazed with pain and, so, it made sense that Sam had also reached enlightenment even though the process was still incomplete.

Dean tore his gaze away from his brother, though it was not easy to do so, not when every instinct was now screaming at him that Sam was too dangerous to turn his back on. An Alpha. An Alpha who already knew him to be an Omegá. An Alpha who had already proven himself to be untrustworthy. An Alpha who was his beloved younger brother, admittedly, but that wasn't much comfort considering how his own equally loved Sire had reacted to him.

"What's wrong, Dean?" Mary asked, putting down the spoon she was using to stir and frowning at him in puzzled concern.

Her blue eyes were clear, marred only by her uncertainty at his unusual quietness and the weird intensity with which he was glaring at Sam. Nothing in her expression spoke of secrets kept. She _didn't_ know. She hadn't warned him because she simply didn't know. And, he considered, chewing that knowledge thoughtfully, why would she have known? She'd never encountered any Alphas other than John and Bill and Bobby and all three had been fully mature adults before the meeting. She, like Dean, had only one prior experience of the physical reality of a presentation and it had been that of an Omegá with a totally different biological transformation and, therefore, totally different symptoms of presentation.

But Bobby. Bobby was a different case entirely. Bobby wasn’t innocent in this. Bobby had to know what was happening to Sam. It was beyond belief that, as an Alpha himself, Bobby hadn't been able to identify the signs and that stabbed Dean with a feeling of betrayal that actually hurt him more than his own Sire's rejection had. There had to be a reason, a good reason, for Bobby's silence on the matter but, at that moment, all Dean felt was the pain of identifying such duplicity.

So, ignoring his mother, Dean turned his hot angry attention to the older Alpha and, though he said nothing to him, Bobby met his eyes and shifted awkwardly in his seat and Dean saw a spasm of embarrassed guilt flicker over his face.

"You knew," Dean accused bitterly.

Bobby didn't even pretend not to understand the nature of his accusation. He gave a one shouldered shrug. "I suspected," he agreed. "Still don't know for absolute certainty but it's been looking increasingly damned likely by the day."

“Know what?” Mary demanded fiercely.

“That Sam’s an Alpha,” Dean spat. "Bobby never thought to mention it."

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she laughed, “Sam isn’t…isn’t…” She stopped, her face filling with indecision. She spun to look at her youngest pup who was just watching the conversation with interest, but no shock, in his dark…too dark…eyes. Noticing her gaze, he just offered her an indifferent shrug. “You’re an Alpha?” she asked, in little more than a whisper.

“Think so,” he agreed easily. “This is what Mr. Al’asfar told us to expect if it happened.”

“And you didn’t think to tell me about it?” She asked with forced calmness.

Sam shrugged again. “Thought you already knew. You seemed to know about Dean. Oh. I forgot. I’m not Dean. You don’t pay that much attention to me. You probably didn’t notice.”

Mary flinched, his barbs hitting home for a moment before truth allowed her to rally. “Dean’s presentation wasn’t totally unexpected because of his physical appearance,” she explained quietly. “That’s the only reason. Not because you matter any less to me. It’s simply that you don’t…”

“Have a tiny dick?” Sam suggested.

Mary stiffened. “I understand this is probably a horrible shock for you, but that’s no excuse to be mean to your brother. Let’s concentrate on what this means to you.”

“It’s not horrible,” Sam said. “It’s pretty cool. I didn’t want to be an Alpha but it doesn’t scare me. Max and Jake are Alphas so it’s not like I don’t already have Alpha friends and it’s not something I'm going to have to hide, so there's that. It doesn’t have to be a big, terrible secret. It’s not so bad to be an Alpha. It’s a damned sight better than being an Omegá. And Mr Al’asfar says it doesn’t mean I can’t still go to university and stuff. The Betas might hate me but they can’t actually discriminate against me for being an Alpha. If I’m smart enough, if I get the grades, I can still be a doctor or a lawyer or something. I don’t have to just be a cop or a soldier or a bounty hunter like dad.”

Mary pushed her own shock and distress aside for a minute, needing to reassure her son who hadn't _chosen_ to present as an Alpha. He was no less a victim of his biology than Dean was and she couldn't blame him for trying to put a positive spin on things.

“Of course you can still do anything you want, Sam. Though, I hate to say it but you probably have to face the idea that University won’t be possible regardless of your designation. We can’t afford it and I can't see that situation changing."

“I’m only fourteen,” Sam countered. “By the time I need to go to University, you’ll have sold Dean so we’ll be rich.”

He didn’t say it maliciously. His tone was simply that of a straightfoward reasonable summary of the facts. Somehow, it made it worse that he had clearly already considered the implications to himself and found a positive out of Dean's misfortune.

Mary flinched, actually staggering backwards in shock. “How dare you…” she spluttered.

It was Dean who diffused the pending explosion. “Sam’s right, Mom. It’s no secret, is it? I’m going to have no choice about going to a Pack and I’m damned well not going to let you hand me over for free like I’m nothing important. You ‘have’ to sell me to them for a shed-load of money or they won’t value me. And if that means Sammy can go to University, that’s cool with me. It would always have been okay with me but now he’s…he’s an Alpha he’ll have to fight harder to get what he wants, ‘cos people will discriminate against him regardless of the law, so he’ll need some decent money behind him if he’s going to make a decent life for himself.”

“See,” Sam said, with satisfaction. “Dean gets it. I’m not being mean, Mom. Just realistic. And at least, this way, I’ll be able to look after Dean at school ‘cos no one’s going to mess with the brother of a presented Alpha, are they? In fact, as long as no one figures out who we really are, and Dad doesn’t find us, it won’t even matter whether anyone finds out Dean is an Omegá now.”

“Pup’s got a point, Mary,” Bobby admitted reluctantly. “As long as no-one knows about John, there’s no reason Sam can’t register himself as Dean _Smith’s_  familial Alpha. That would make it literally illegal for any other Alpha to go near him without Sam’s express permission. If any of the other Alphas as much as touched him, Sam would have the right to have them flogged and, if they, well, actually found a way to _assault_ him, the very least penalty would be their castration. The laws that excuse teen Alpha behaviour are completely trumped by the laws that protect Omegáres."

“Yeah, well, touching as that whole scenario sounds, I think we'll stick to the plan of no-one finding out in the first place,” Dean snarled. “I have absolutely no intention of wandering around Sioux Falls dressed like an Omegá with all my bits on view. It’s all very well saying no-one could touch me, it wouldn’t stop them being able to _look_ at me.”

“You’d probably have to use officially approved Omegá seating too,” Sam said, thoughtfully. “That would really piss the school off. Mr Al’asfar says those things cost a fortune and I think they’d have to install them in every single classroom or get accused of discrimination. Apparently the government takes the notion of Omegá rights really seriously,” he added dryly.

Dean blinked in astonishment at his brother, but then Sam smirked wickedly and Dean actually laughed in response as he understood and appreciated the attempt at humour.

“I can’t believe you, any of you,” Mary said, her eyes dark with anger. “Maybe none of you want to face the elephant in this room, but someone has to say it. Dean’s an Omegá . Sam’s an Alpha who sooner or later is going to suffer rut rage and think an Omegá is his best option of a good time. What the hell is wrong with that picture?”

“Ewwww,” Sam protested, looking genuinely horrified.

“Double ewww,” Dean agreed, pantomiming a dramatic gagging.

Sam echoed Dean’s actions, adding with emphasis, “He’s my brother! There's no way I'd ever do...ugh... no, don't even want to think about it."

“I’m sorry, Sam," Mary said, "but I don’t think you’d care who he is under those particular circumstances. How can I possibly take the risk? It could take you another two years to suffer the 'rage' or it could happen tomorrow. Am I supposed to just sit back, cross my fingers and hope for the best?”

“You’re possibly right, Mary,” Bobby interrupted, “but not necessarily. The rage isn’t as blind as you imagine it to be. It’s driven by an urge to procreate, so the natural impulse of a teen Alpha in ‘rage’ is to mount a fertile Beta female. You’re still young enough to be actually more at risk in that scenario than Dean is.”

“And now I think I’ve just sicked up in my mouth a bit,” Sam groaned.

“Hang on a minute. That makes absolutely no damned sense,” Dean protested. “I know all about rut houses and I’m still supposed to believe an Alpha would rather fuck a Beta than an Omegá ? Sorry, mom,” he added sheepishly.

“I think your language is the least important part of that question,” Mary replied. “I need to know the answer too.”

Bobby flushed uncomfortably. “Look,” he said, “it works like this. A teen Alpha in rut rage gets a sniff of a fertile womb and wants to impregnate it. It’s a biological imperative that they act on without conscious thought and, yes, an Omegá also has a fertile womb so does inspire the same reaction except…well, it’s different because at some instinctive level the Alpha knows it’s a womb they can’t actually impregnate. So that causes some kind of dichotomy inside the Alpha and enables at least some level of rational thought to come into play. At that point, given two choices, that of a Beta or an Omegá , the Alpha will almost always choose the Beta. How the rut houses worked was by taking away that choice. And there’s, well, there’s another thing about Omegáres. They can say ‘no’. The one absolute right of any Omegá that no one of any other designation can ever deny is their right to say 'no'."

“Huh?” Dean asked, completely bewildered.

Bobby grunted uncomfortably. “Can’t figure out how I got stuck having this conversation,” he muttered, under his breath. “I’m no damned scientist,” he growled. “I don’t know why, but there’s something that stops anyone raping an Omegá . It isn't to do with belief or religion. It's more like some kind of instinctive repulsion that can't be overridden unless the perpetrator is literally insane. I can’t explain it more than that. It just is true. An Omegá can’t be physically raped.”

“Bullshit,” Mary snarled. “Why the hell did Detroit happen if that’s true?”

“Why did the Pack try Betas?” Bobby countered. “Why was the only Alpha on trial the Alpha Guardian, an adult who had never even touched the Omegá ? Why wasn’t a single one of the teen Alphas held accountable?”

“I figured it was because they weren’t considered responsible for what they did under the influence of rut rage,” Dean said.

“That’s only a defence in Beta Law,” Sam said, thoughtfully. “Our courts only hold people guilty if they deliberately do harm. It’s called Mens Rea. It means there has to be intent. Betas can’t prosecute teen Alphas for rape because there’s no ‘intent’ to do it, it happens out of their control. Pack Law doesn’t care about intent. It’s enough that it was done. So under Pack Law, Castiel could have tried every single Alpha teen who ever touched that Omegá. But, like Bobby said, he didn’t. That _is_ weird.”

“The Alphas weren’t prosecuted because, under Pack Law, they hadn’t done anything wrong because the very fact it could happen was absolute evidence that the Omegá never said ‘no’,” Bobby explained. “I’m not talking about morality here. I’m not suggesting that rape isn’t rape just because the victim doesn’t ‘say’ no. Each and every one of those Alphas did ‘morally’ rape that Omegá because they knew the consent was dubiously obtained but the bottom line is that, biologically, the act of penetration would not have been possible if the Omegá had refused to be mounted.”

“Rape is rape,” Mary snarled. “It’s a black and white issue.”

“No, Mom,” Dean argued. “I understand now what Bobby’s trying to say and the problem here is that we kind of need to have two different words for ‘rape’ to make real sense of it. The reason the Betas were prosecuted rather than the Alphas was that the Betas set the Omegá up, deliberately triggered his sexual responses so he ‘couldn’t’ say no, didn't perhaps in that moment even want to say no, and then since the Alphas received the ‘consent’ they biologically needed to be capable of mounting him they didn't do anything wrong."

“Exactly,” Bobby agreed. “What is so clever and insidious about the Beta government is that they’ve discovered every method of triggering an Omegá into a sexually receptive state and they make use of that for financial and political gain. The Omegáres themselves probably end up more psychologically screwed than any Beta victim would because they can’t even deny an accusation that they ‘wanted’ it, even though absolutely everyone knows that isn’t really true. But that can only happen to an Omegá under the guardianship of an Alpha willing to follow the government agenda. So, honestly, Mary, the only way Dean could ever be in danger from Sam, even during Rut Rage, is if he were subject to the kind of Beta manipulated scenarios that would make him ‘receptive’ to Sam’s advances.”

“So you're saying Sam can’t rape me, unless I let him do it,” Dean said.

Sam cringed and made another gagging gesture at the thought.

“But I assume nothing would stop him raping Mom or any other beta female,” Dean continued.

Bobby shook his head. “Not during the ‘rage’. Any fertile female would be fair game. Wild dogs don’t stop and ask for permission before they mount a bitch in heat, do they? Well, the scenario is the same for a teen Alpha.”

“I take it back,” Sam said, in a small, scared voice. “Being an Alpha isn’t ‘cool’ at all.”

Dean laughed bitterly, shaking his head in disbelief. “I came running home thinking Mom was going to have to do something to save me from you, Sam. It never occurred to me that what I actually need to do is save _her_ from you.”

“I’d never hurt Mom,” Sam cried.

“I know you’d never want to, baby,” Mary said, “but I think we have to face the possibility it could happen.”

“I don’t want to ‘rape’ anyone,” Sam sniffled miserably.

“You’re only fourteen,” Dean muttered. “After another year or two of you being flooded with hypercharged testosterone, you’ll probably feel differently.”

“Nine months,” Mary said, firmly. “That’s all we need. Just enough time to get you safely to a Pack Land, Dean. The chances are that Sam won’t hit the ‘rage’ in just nine months.”

Dean shook his head. “That’s off the table now. It’s no good, Mom. Sam’s going to be a teen Alpha. You can’t just abandon him here with Bobby, trying to fend for himself in Beta Land. And you can’t send me off alone and stay with him yourself either. I’m not going off and letting you handle this alone. We’ve got to somehow survive here until Sam is sixteen, then we can all go to a Pack Land together. Packs have doctors and lawyers and crap. There’s no reason Sam can’t still have a good education and future.”

“That’s all very well and good, Dean,” Bobby said, “but I can’t see you making it much past your sixteenth birthday without John tracking you down. The only reason he hasn’t found you is that he isn’t looking for you yet. But when he turns up in Lawrence for your sweet sixteenth and you aren't there, he's going to come after you. And given his reaction to your presentation, I wouldn't want to rate Sam's chances of surviving that encounter."

"Have you heard from him or even anything about him from anyone?" Mary demanded urgently.

"Not a word. I don't know what he's up to but he hasn't requested any support for the last few months. That's not unusual though. I rarely heard from him more often than once every couple of years. He's always been a lone wolf."

"Could I trust you would tell me if he did call?" Mary demanded significantly.

Bobby snarled at the question. "This bullshit because I didn't tell you what I thought about Sam?"

Mary just shrugged.

"Didn't think it was my business," Bobby countered. "Not like we've ever had any emo-girl conversations about Dean, is it? Why should I have thought my opinions about Sam were any more welcome?"

Mary thought about it and then was fair enough to sigh in defeat."You're right," she admitted. "I've always made it pretty clear I wasn't open to discussing Dean's designation with you so why would you imagine Sam was any different? This is my fault. I'm sorry, Bobby."

"So what now?" Dean asked. "We just carry on like nothing has changed?"

"Until we think of a better option. I always imagined Sam would at least have John to fall back on if we had to run but Bobby's right, your dad isn't going to listen to reason."

"Are we sure the same border restrictions are in place for underage Alphas?" Sam asked abruptly. "I can see why it would be a problem for an Omegá to leave Beta Land but you'd think they'd be glad to see the back of an Alpha."

"That's a good point, Sam," Mary said, "I'll call Ash and see if he's got any idea how it works for Alphas. Maybe it would be possible for us all to get over the border when Dean is sixteen. You're okay with the idea?"

"I don't want to hurt you, Mom. I don't want to hurt _anyone_. I know I act like a jerk sometimes but I don't want to be like this. Maybe the Packs know a different way to handle rut rage. They must have a way, because no one ever seems to get raped in Pack Lands and there are a lot more Alphas there."

"So that's the plan. We carry on," Mary agreed.

"One thing," Dean said. "None of you are going to want to hear this, but it has to be said. If anything happens, Sam, if you get all 'ragey', if you can't stop yourself, if you're going to hurt someone, someone like Mom, then listen to me. Listen to me now and don't ever forget I said this. The answer is 'yes', Sam. It will always be 'yes'."

"DEAN!" Mary yelled, reeling with shock.

Sam looked nauseous.

Bobby said nothing, just pursed his lips and looked thoughtful.

"I mean it, Mom," Dean insisted firmly. "God forbid it should ever happen but if it does, then it WILL be me because I'm an Omegá, Mom. I'm built for it. Sam won't hurt me. Sam can't hurt me. If the worst comes to the worst and everything goes to shit and Sam can't stop himself, then it will damned well be me who will be there for him because," he paused and turned his attention fully on his brother, "because if it's me, I'll be okay. I'll deal and I'll survive and I'll forgive you but, I swear to you now, if you ever hurt Mom, or any other innocent, then I will end you, Sam. You're my brother and I love you, but I will kill you dead if you ever turn into that kind of soulless monster."


	45. Chapter Forty Two

 

“It’s really weird,” Charlie said, out of the blue.

It was a couple of weeks after the Ostara break and she, Gilda and Dean were walking home from school together. The Spring was turning to early Summer so the weather was getting warmer and the days were getting longer and the walk through the countryside that sprawled between the school and their homes was pleasant for all of them, particularly since they no longer had the opportunity to chat during class.

“What’s weird?” Gilda asked.

“The way Sam is behaving,” Charlie said. “It’s like actually presenting as an Alpha has somehow made him _less_ of a dick. I bumped into him in the corridor on my way to Chemistry and instead of biting my head off, he apologised for getting in my way. Made a point of stressing that he would never ‘hurt a girl’. Can you even believe it? An Alpha said sorry to a Beta.”

“Maybe you should treat people as people instead of stereotypes and you wouldn’t be so shocked,” Dean snapped. To be fair, his unusual display of verbal irritation was driven less by Charlie’s comment than the fact he had just suffered two days of really bad PMT and now was not only cramping quite badly but was conscious of his need to get home quickly just in case his ‘protection’ failed him.

“Wow, must be someone’s time of the month,” Gilda snickered.

Dean almost had a heart attack on the spot but, glaring at the blonde, he saw nothing in her expression except normal teasing.

“Ha, de ha,” he muttered grumpily.

“No, you’re right,” Charlie admitted. “Though you don’t have to be so snappy  about it. But it’s true that I’m out of order stereotyping Alphas. It’s not fair or even valid. I mean, Gordon is pretty typical. Big, dumb and mean. But then there’s Metatron who is small, smart and mean. Max and Jake are big and kind of dumb, but not _particularly_ mean. And then there’s Sam who is suddenly getting HUGE, but he’s really smart and not mean at all. Just sometimes a bit snarly and bitchy.”

“I’ll give you the bitchy,” Dean allowed, “but he’s no bully. Never has been and, actually, now he’s presented he’s trying really hard to be nicer to people. He’s… he’s actually a bit scared. Sam has a temper and sometimes he acts without thinking but he honestly would never hurt anyone on purpose and so presenting has kind of thrown him off kilter.”

“Well, I’m all for the idea of at least one of the school Alphas being a nice guy,” Charlie said, positively.

“Not that being ‘nice’ is going to make any difference really,” Gilda complained. “I don’t think it’ll make him any less dangerous than the others when he hits the ‘rage’.”

“I don’t know,” Charlie argued. “Let’s face it, I can’t even imagine ever being scared of Dean. He’s just not capable of doing something bad to anyone else. Even if he _is_ being a bit of a bitch today.”

“I’m sorry,” Dean said, flushing with shame. “I just have a bit of stomach ache.”

“Happens,” Charlie said, easily. “I had a real humdinger of a headache last night and bit Auntie Pat’s head off for no good reason at all. I still feel bad about it. I’m going to make a real effort to be extra nice to her ton…”

“SHIT,” Gilda gasped, stopping dead in the middle of the path.

Dean, who had been wandering along looking at his feet rather than the route ahead, looked up in surprise.

“Shit,” he echoed, as the low ache in his stomach was replaced by the thudding of his suddenly racing heart.

Twenty feet ahead of them on the otherwise deserted path through the field that led into the remote trailerpark Gilda lived in with her parents, Metatron had stepped out from behind a tree and was now blocking their path, with a wide, dangerously glinting, smile on his face.

“Took me a while to figure it out,” he said, conversationally, walking towards them. “Because you think you’re smarter than me, changing routes every day, taking different directions out of town, but then I realised I didn’t need to follow you, Gilda. I just had to wait where you actually always had to end up.”

“You’ve got no right to…” Charlie started.

“Shut up, bitch,” Metatron snarled. “I’m not talking to you. This is just me having a nice chat with my girlfriend, so butt out.”

“I am not your girlfriend,” Gilda said, her voice firm and steady, although she had started to tremble with fear.

Metatron laughed. “Look, I know you Beta girls like to play hard to get, like to hook a guy by pretending not to be interested. That’s fine. It worked. Time to move on, Gilda. See, I would have played along with you a bit longer but, thing is, I’ve kind of run out of time myself. I’ve started getting these inconvenient… well, let’s call them ‘urges,’ so we need to speed our romance up a bit.”

“There is no romance,” Gilda spat. “So take your ‘urges’ off to a whorehouse, Metatron. I know you’ve been issued a government pass so go and use it and LEAVE ME ALONE.”

Metatron shook his head in mock sadness. “What am I going to do with you, Gilda? Do you actually think so little of me that you imagine I would lay hands on another woman when my intended ‘wife’ is already stood in front of me?”

“WIFE?” she spluttered in disbelief.

“Of course,” he purred. “I wouldn’t disrespect you, Gilda. I know I’m still strictly underage but it doesn’t matter. If I give you my mating bite now, the law will still honor it. We’ll be ‘married’ and then, well, that will solve everything, won’t it? I’ve figured it out. Pop a pup inside my ‘wife’ and that should sort my ‘urges’ out too. See it’s a biology thing. The way I see it, the best way to handle rut rage is to avoid it altogether. I hate the idea of being out of control, you see, so I think this is the best solution for everyone.”

Dean blinked at him in astonishment. At first he hadn’t been able to understand how Metatron could possibly have been sounding so coherent. He’d always imagined ‘rut rage’ to be the vision of a red-eyed Alpha, charging after a victim like a mindless animal, so he’d been too bewildered so far to do anything except listen. But this wasn’t even rut rage. This was just…well…insanity.

“I don’t think it works like that, Metatron,” he said, carefully. “I think if it was as easy as that to stave off the ‘rage’, then teen Alphas would have been mated off immediately for centuries.”

“What would you know, Mr Big, Dumb, Alpha-wannabe?” Metatron snarled. “You think you’re better than me because you’ve got a pretty face and a big dick? You’re nothing. I could squish you like a bug with my little finger. So take your little redheaded whore and fuck off. This is between me and Gilda.”

“You’re crazy,” Gilda stated. “If you rape me, my parents will have you arrested. You can’t even claim ‘rage’ as a defence because we’ve all witnessed you’re perfectly lucid.”

“I’m not going to rape you,” Metatron protested angrily. “If I bite you first, it isn’t ‘rape’. It’s just a legal mating.”

“I don’t think that’s even true under Pack Law, and it definitely isn’t under Beta Law,” Charlie argued. “I don’t know what you’re smoking, Metatron, but you’ve definitely misinterpreted something if you think there’s some kind of legal validity to the idea of enforced marriage by rape.”

“Go home, Metatron,” Dean warned. “You _might_ be stronger than me, but you won’t know for sure until it’s too late and, anyway, the minute you touch _any_ of us it’s going to be game over for you. Don’t you realise this shit is _exactly_ the kind of crap the City Council probably want you to pull? If they could see you right now they’d be rubbing their hands with glee that you’re going to save them two years worth of brothel fees because you won’t need a ‘ho’ if your balls have been cut off. I thought you were supposed to be _smart_ , but you’re being a stupid kid. Just go.”

Metatron hesitated, looking uncertain for a moment, and Dean took the opportunity to try and urge Gilda in the direction of her home. But the moment she took a step away, red flared in Metatron’s eyes and, with an animalistic roar of fury, he charged in her direction.

“Too late,” Charlie gulped. “ _That’s_ ‘rage’.”

“Shit,” Dean sobbed, instantly terrified, but he still charged forwards himself to intercept the smaller pup.

It was like being hit by an out of control truck.

Dean actually heard the pop of his right arm dislocating from its socket as Metatron barrelled head-first into him. The pain was so intense that he bit his own tongue in response and then the taste of his mouth flooding with blood merged with the throbbing ache in his shoulder to flood his entire body with sickening pain.

Yet the impact had rocked Metatron too, sending him staggering backwards a couple of steps with blood gushing from his nose.

Dean took advantage of Metatron’s momentary state of dazed confusion by driving his left fist into his face, splintering his already damaged nose, smashing the cartilage and sending a fresh spray of blood into the air between them.

Metatron howled with pain but punched back blindly, hitting Dean in the right side of his chin. Even badly aimed and off centre, the blow was enough to lift Dean clear off his feet and throw him backwards in the air. He landed so heavily on the ground that the air whooshed out of his lungs and, for a moment, he didn’t think he’d even manage to suck air back into himself again because the pain in his diaphragm felt like his entire rib-cage had collapsed.

He gasped desperately for air, knowing if he stayed down he would die, if he stayed down Gilda would be defenceless, and knowing _that_ he somehow, impossibly, managed to roll over onto his face, push himself up onto his knees and somehow gasp a much needed breath. As his lungs expanded once more, the terrible ache in his ribs eased and he staggered to his feet, even as he heard a high-pitched agonised scream.

“Gilda,” he gasped.

“She’s fine,” Charlie yelped. “It isn’t _her_ screaming.”

Dean shook his head woozily, then blinked in disbelief.  Metatron was on the floor, squealing a continuous high-pitched shriek as Charlie continued to send wave after wave of 50,000 volt charges from her taser into the electrodes buried in his groin.  His pants were literally smoking and there was a distinct smell of burning flesh.

“Do you think I can actually castrate him with this thing?” Charlie asked cheerfully.

“Where’s Gilda?” Dean gasped, spitting blood out of his mouth.

“She’s run home to call the cops. I figure, to be on the safe side, I’ll just keep pressing the trigger ‘til they get here. You okay?”

“I’ll live,” Dean said. “Don’t think anything’s actually broken. My Uncle Bobby can probably set my shoulder. I thought the taser thing was a joke.”

Charlie looked at him silently for a long moment, staring at his face like she’d never seen it before, though she never let go of the taser, and  then she said, “You did real good, Dean. You saved her. Gave me time to get this out of my schoolbag. If you hadn’t been here…well, doesn’t bear thinking about does it. Sit down. Catch your breath. I’ve got this.”

Dean gratefully complied.

“Oh, and Dean?” Charlie added softly. “You’ve lost a contact. Better fix that before anyone comes, okay?”

 

~

 

“I thought you’d hate me,” Dean confessed later, after the flurry of excitement was over with Metatron being hauled away in the back of a cop car and he, himself, obviously refusing the offer of a lift to the hospital.

"Hate you? You're magic, Dean. Do you have any idea how few Omegáres even exist? You're a sacred, magical being descended directly from the Omadonna himself. You're like...like a real life superhero," she gushed.

"Yeah, and my superpower is that I'm apparently a great fuck," Dean grumbled.

"You're a true real life hero. Just ask Gilda. Besides, you're only catnip for an Alpha," Charlie pointed out "and look how few of those there are in the world. There's what? A half dozen total in our school and it's one of the largest High Schools in the whole state. Besides, only an Alpha Primá can mate with you and I don't think there's more than a dozen of those in the whole of the Midwest and most of those are already mated."

"I'm not even sure Alpha Primáres really exist," Dean said, petulantly. His mouth and shoulder hurt too much for him to even pretend a good mood. "I think there are just a few rich as fuck Alphas who set up packs and pretend to be something special. It's just their money that makes other Alphas submit to them. They're probably just like Gordon. He's the stupidest guy in this school, a total asshole, and still all the other Alphas here act like he shits gold. Money is where the real power lies."

Charlie considered his words, then shook her head in negation. "Nah. I mean you're right about Gordon and the way money speaks but that's just how the hierarchy of power works here because Alphas born in Free Beta America don't have real Packs to join so make up their own version. In a real Pack, the Primáres aren't chosen by some democratic process. They are an actual breed apart. They are actually physically different from other Alphas."

Dean shrugged carelessly. "So they're rich and have the biggest dicks," he sneered.  "Well, supposedly. Look at the Cain Dynasty. Every single scion of Cain owns practically a dozen States each and justifies it by the fact they supposedly have bigger dicks than elephants. But who actually knows whether that's true? It's not like they have to walk around swinging their dicks in the air to prove it. It's Omegáres who have to go around half-naked, displaying their asses like shop windows."

"It's not Omegá asses on display, as much as their Flores," Charlie countered. "Even if you had a normal sized cock, your flower would give you away as being Omegá .  You have a totally unique reproductive system.”

“I don’t know much about it,” Dean admitted. “Well, except what’s obvious to me, I mean.”

“My parents were really traditional. Before they died and I moved here to live with my Aunt, I used to go to a school that taught real science,” Charlie said. “So I don’t know everything, but I guess I might know more than you do. Like I know it's popular slang to call the inside of your flower a 'hole' but what you actually have is something a lot closer to female genitalia. In girls, the labia opens to both the urinary tract and the womb, one entrance but two exits, if you like. Omegáres are the same, except you still have a vestigial cock for urine and your flower is one entrance into both your reproductive system and your rectum. Alphas probably don't really notice the difference because they fuck Omegáres in their asses, but a Primá cock is so big that it bypasses the rectum and goes straight for your womb passage. It's the only place big enough to accept something as huge as a Primá knot."

"I know that people say that stuff about a Primá cock," Dean replied, "but I don't believe it. I'm supposed to really buy that these Primáres have some kind of super dicks that swell to the size of footballs inside Omegáres and, more importantly, supposedly I'd actually _enjoy_ something as big as my own head being rammed inside me? Gods, just the thought makes me want to vomit."

"Well I agree the idea was better in theory than now, when I try to image it happening to someone I actually know," Charlie admitted, glancing doubtfully at Dean's narrow hips. "It does seem a bit 'out there' now I really think about it but, still, why are Primáres so powerful if it's only a myth?"

"Because they're so rich no one wants to contradict them," Dean suggested.

"Or it’s the fact they are Primáres that makes them rich as fuck," Charlie laughed. "Besides, they don't just have 'reputedly' monstrous dicks. They are actually physically different from other Alphas in other ways. They don't have Alpha fangs for one thing. Oh, and they are smaller in stature. Come to think of it, the average Primá is actually smaller than you, Dean. I think Cain is the only one who is your height."

"Great," Dean grumbled. "So I can look forward to being married off to a dwarf with a big dick."

Charlie giggled. "They aren't dwarves, you idiot. They're bigger than Betas. They just aren't as big as an average Alpha. They don't have to be. They have cool superpowers so they don't need to look like muscle-bound Oxen. You must have seen pictures of them on the web."

Dean shook his head. "I guess I might have but I never paid any attention," he confessed. "I've always been more interested in looking for pictures of Omegáres. There aren't many of them out there, so when I _have_ found them I've been so excited I probably haven't really thought about who else might be in the photo too."

"I don't think Omegáres leave the Pack Lands that often," Charlie agreed. "But you really ought to look up pics of the Primáres. There’s loads of Castiel because he moves in a lot of Beta circles and he is _really_ gorgeous. If I swung that way I would seriously be into him. I know he's already got a Beta Wife, so I wouldn't be in with a chance anyway, but a girl can dream and, wow, he's definitely one dreamy guy if you like that kind of thing and, I don't, like that kind of thing, I mean, but if _did_ then Castiel would be it for me. Hey, he isn't mated to an Omegá yet. You should seriously get in there quick. I bet he'd take one look at you and trip over his own tongue."

"Yeah, right," Dean laughed, self-depreciatingly. "The most notorious hard-ass superstar Grandé Alpha Primá in the western world would want _my_ ass? I don't think so. Even if I was interested, which I'm not, I'm hardly going to be on the radar of someone like that. I'll probably end up married off to some two-bit Primá ruling over a bit of swampland in Florida or something."

"I'm kinda sure that Omegáres are too rare to end up married to a 'two-bit' Primá _ever_. I'm sure you're absolutely guaranteed to end up with a really rich and powerful one," Charlie argued. "And you have absolutely, hands-down the most gorgeous face I've ever seen. Not one of the other Omegáres I've seen online are even close to how beautiful you are going to be."

"I might have a pretty face," Dean agreed, since there was no point denying it, "but I think the fact it's attached to a huge, clodhopping body is probably going to make me considerably less attractive to a Primá. Even Betas don't often like having wives who are taller than them. Why would a Primá feel any differently? All the Omegáres I've seen are small delicate willowy creatures, not hulking Alpha-wannabes like me."

Charlie contemplated his point, biting her lower lip uncertainly, but then she brightened considerably. “Actually,” she said, “If the whole point of Omegáres being so valuable is that only _they_ can birth Alpha Primáres, then you being a big, strapping Omegá ought to be a selling point. Let’s face it, any pups you whelp are probably going to be whoppers too!”

“I think that just proves the whole idea of Primáres is based on legends, bullshit and bad science,” Dean scoffed bitterly. “If there _really_ is a difference between Alphas and Primáres is just that the Primáres are genetically fucked up Alphas _because_ they are whelped by Omegáres.  I’m not anything ‘special’, Charlie. I’m just a screwed up Beta hermaphrodite and whatever went wrong in _my_ genetic make-up gets passed through me into any Alpha sons I have and fucks _them_ up too. All the rest of it is just religious bullshit.”

“Wow. It really IS that time of the month for you, isn’t it?” Charlie said. “Where’s all your normal positivity and ‘get up and go’ attitude?”

“It got up and went,” Dean snapped. “Probably about the time when Metatron dislocated my shoulder.”

“Yeah,” she sighed sympathetically. “Pain will do that to you. Still, at least if your shoulder is hurting that much, I bet you’ve forgotten all about your cramps.”

Dean blinked at her, uncertainly, then reluctantly laughed. “Yea, Betty Bright-side, I guess there’s _that_ to be grateful for.”

"Alpha Primáres have _always_ been the sons of an Alpha Primá sire and an Omegá mother," Charlie stated confidently. "That's what the _original_ scripture says. The All-Father lay with the Omadonna and he birthed six sons, all Alpha Primáres.  Then the All-Father created Alphas to guard them and _lastly_ he created Betas to support them.  But because Betas were created last and lowest of all, he gave Betas the gift of hope by allowing that once in a while a _miracle_ would happen and an Alpha or Omegá might be born to them. 

“It was only when six Omegáres were finally birthed to the Betas, that they were impregnated by the original Alpha Primáres and gave birth to a new generation of Alpha Primáres and so on through the centuries. I don’t know how the world has become so fucked up that people have forgotten what’s really important and special about Omegáres but I will _never_ stand by and let anyone ‘dis them in front of me, and that includes YOU, Dean. So stow that crap. You _are_ special and magical and wonderful and I am damned well honoured to be your friend, so don’t put ME down by saying I’m making a mistake to feel that way.

“I’m kinda confused about one thing, though. Why do Omegáres call themselves ‘male’? I always thought the Omadonna had to be gender-neutral really, and the reason scripture called him a ‘him’ was because ‘it’ sounded rude and, given the historical way people viewed the position of women in society, ‘her’ was possibly even ruder

"You're legally considered male, but biologically speaking you aren't really," Charlie continued carefully. "You have a vestigial penis and testes. Your penis is too small to penetrate anyone. I bet you can't ejaculate at all. External genitalia in an Omegá serves no sexual purpose, yet you have a fully functioning womb and ovaries. So realistically you're biologically more girl than boy."

"I'm _not_ a girl," Dean muttered angrily.

"Well you certainly don’t look like a girl and if you identify as male that's what you are," Charlie replied staunchly. "I'm the last person who'd ever argue that a person doesn't have the right to choose. It’s just weird, I guess, the idea of a male giving birth, I mean.”

“I get that,” Dean agreed. “But I’m not saying I’m a ‘boy’ either. Like my mom says, I’m Omegá and Omegáres can’t be defined in normal human terminology. We are something ‘other’. It’s not really valid to compare our unique sexuality to either of the human norms.”

“So, you’re effectively saying you are ‘special, magical and wonderful’ not a ‘screwed up Beta hermaphrodite’ after all?” Charlie crowed triumphantly.

“You tricked me into saying that,” Dean protested.

“That’s ‘cos I’m a Beta and that makes me smarter than you,” Charlie said smugly. “Don’t fight it, you’ll never win. My bestie is a super special magical wonderful person. He isn’t always the brightest spark in the woodpile but that’s okay, ‘cos he has me to watch his back.”

“Wow,” Dean said. “Thanks, I think.”

“You’re very welcome,” Charlie laughed. “Come on, let’s get you home so your mom can yell at me for letting you get hurt.”

 

 

 

 

 


	46. Chapter Forty Three

“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Dean said, the moment he stepped into the kitchen with Charlie at his heels. “This is Charlie, my friend.”

“Hi!” Charlie said, waving nervously.

"Hey, Charlie," Sam said absently, his attention drawn instead to his brother's face.

Bobby just harrumphed, narrowing his eyes at the tiny redhead and clearly reserving judgement on the unexpected interloper.

“Hello, Charlie,” Mary said, wiping her hands on her apron and stepping away from the sink. Her greeting was more civil but not necessarily any friendlier. “Why don’t you take a seat and tell me all about yourself. Oh, and perhaps you’d also like to explain why my son looks like he’s been punched in the face.”

“I knew I’d get the blame,” Charlie muttered, but her eyes were still bright with good humour. “I think the most important thing you need to worry about first is Dean’s shoulder. It's pretty badly hurt so it should probably be your priority."

Alarmed, Mary surged forwards. "How badly hurt?" She demanded, reaching out but then hesitating uncertainly, clearly unsure whether Dean was safe to touch.

“I think it’s dislocated,” Dean admitted. Mary exclaimed in distress, her hands fluttering in the air helplessly, fear of doctors warring with her need to deal with Dean's injury, but Bobby just calmly motioned him over to him. "Let’s take a look at you,” he said.

Dean crossed the room and knelt so that Bobby could easily reach to feel around his arm, neck and collarbone. “Yup,” Bobby said, after a brief, careful inspection. "Just needs popping back in the socket. Can’t feel any breaks. You ready, Pup?”

“Just do it,” Dean agreed.

“Okay, brace yourself. On three, then. One, Tw…”

He jerked his arm against Dean’s, his immense Alpha strength easily seating the bone back where it belonged in one smooth motion.

“Owwwwww,” Dean moaned. “You said ‘three’.”

“I lied,” Bobby said, unapologetically. “How does that feel?”

“Better. Sore, but I can move my arm properly now at least and the pins and needles in my hand and wrist have stopped."

“It’ll take at least a week or so for the tendons to heal and it’s going to be swollen and sore for a day or two, but there’s nothing broken as far as I can tell. So what happened?”

“Metatron,” Dean said, succinctly.

"FUCKER," Sam yelled, surging to his feet. "I'm gonna kill him," he added, his blood red eyes promising his words weren't mere hyperbole.

"SIT DOWN!" Bobby roared, his Alpha voice so unmistakable that Sam yipped like a chastised pup and sank back into his chair.

"Now _that's_  a cool superpower," Charlie muttered but, then, seeing the fury on Mary's face, she quickly added, “Metatron attacked our friend, Gilda. Dean saved her. He stopped Metatron from raping her. That's how he got hurt."

“I only slowed him down. It was your taser that stopped him,” Dean pointed out generously.

Charlie shrugged, “Okay, so **_we_** stopped him and then the cops came and Dean couldn’t go to the hospital, obviously, so we came straight here.”

“She _knows_ ,” Dean added, in case they hadn’t caught the point already.

“He lost a contact,” Charlie explained, when Mary’s furious glare turned back in her direction. “So I figured out what was what. He fixed it before the cops came, so no-one else saw his eyes. No one else knows.”

“Not even Metatron?” Mary demanded.

“I’m pretty sure he was too busy having his balls fried to notice,” Dean said, with not a little satisfaction.

Mary looked at Bobby significantly.

“I’ll call the cops, find out what’s up,” Bobby agreed.

As he reached for the phone, Mary frowned at her son’s face. “It _just_ happened?”

“On our way from school,” Dean agreed. “He was lying in wait near Gilda’s home. He wouldn’t listen to reason, Mom, and I couldn’t just let him…well, you know.”

“Of course,” she agreed. “But the bruise is awfully black, Dean. I just don’t see how it could be that dark that quickly. It’s almost like it’s several days old already for the bruise to have come out that much. But that’s crazy. You didn’t heal any faster than normal when you were hurt last year.”

“That was a year ago,” Bobby interrupted, as he waited on hold for someone to answer at the police station. “He’d only just presented then. Omegáres heal even faster than Alphas but, like Alphas, they have to grow into their abilities. So you’re right about the bruise looking a couple of days old. It’s come out that quickly because Dean’s already starting to heal himself.”

“Oh, I forgot Omegáres have healing superpowers too,” Charlie gushed. “That’s why they live so long, ‘cos their bodies repair cell damage so well.”

Bobby’s call was answered, so he rolled out of the kitchen for privacy (and so that no-one on the other end of the phone heard the conversation behind him).

“I didn’t know that,” Dean said, intrigued by the information.

“Yeah, Omegáres and Primáres both heal even faster than Alphas do,” Charlie confirmed. “That’s why they live for so long.”

“I knew about the long lifespan,” Dean said, “I just hadn’t considered the reason for it.”

“Yeah, the process of aging is all about accumulated cell damage,” Charlie said, “So the theory is that it’s the fact you heal minor damage so easily that means your rate of cell decay is far slower. ‘Course, that doesn’t help with fractures or breaks that much, so it’s a good job Metatron didn’t manage to land that punch any harder.”

“Let me understand this,” Mary interrupted. “Metatron was trying to attack a Beta girl and you got in the way? He didn’t specifically try to attack _you_?”

“He didn’t know what I am, if that’s what you mean,” Dean confirmed. “Only Charlie figured it out, because I lost my lens, and she’s cool. She’s not going to say anything.”

“I swear,” Charlie promised sincerely. “No one will ever find out from me.”

Mary nodded, though she looked less than happy. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Charlie, exactly, but Dean’s safety was inevitably compromised further with every person who came aware of his designation.

"At least we know now that Bobby was right about Alphas not automatically attacking me when they're in 'rage'," Dean said, positively.

"You look pretty 'attacked' to me," Mary pointed out dryly.

Dean flushed with embarrassment. "You know what I _mean,"_ he muttered uncomfortably.

“Okay, I managed to speak to the Sheriff. She’s a friend, so I’ve no reason to doubt what she’s telling me and the only thing Metatron is saying about Dean is that he was trying to steal his ‘girlfriend’,” Bobby announced, as he wheeled himself back into the room.

"So what will happen to Metatron?"

"Hard to say," Bobby replied thoughtfully. "If people knew Dean's designation, the penalty would be cut and dried. Physically assaulting an Omegá is a capital crime."

"Unless it's a government official doing it for my own 'good', of course," Dean muttered bitterly.

"If Metatron had actually managed to rape Gilda, then a sentence of castration would probably be likely but he didn't and, as far as anyone knows, he only assaulted a male Beta who everyone assumes is on the cusp of being an Alpha himself, so the most a prosecutor could go for is attempted rape and common assault and, you said yourself, Dean, he was in 'rage' at the actual point of attacking, so the only thing they could go after him for is the common assault. And, since you refused medical treatment, so there's no formal record of the injuries, they might not even make that stick."

"So he's going to get away with it."

"Legally," Bobby confirmed. "But if his folks have any sense they're already packing their car because I've met Don Fairchild, Gilda's Sire, and I sure as hell would expect him to be a Metatron's house with a shotgun the minute he finds out the pup's been released from hospital and I'd expect any 911 calls from that address to get lost in the system for long enough for it to be dealt with permanently. Vigilante justice tends to triumph in these kinds of cases."

"He's only fourteen," Dean pointed out. "He's just a stupid, crazy kid. I'd be down with him being castrated, because he's dangerous, but he doesn't deserve to die."

"Looking at the state of you, I'd be happy to put a bullet in him myself," Mary snarled.

Dean smiled at her, eternally grateful for her true, fierce love, but he still shook his head in negation. "Vengeance solves nothing, Mom, and violence just breeds more violence. I think Metatron is genuinely ill and that's a cause for pity not punishment. I get that sometimes people are so dangerous that the only way to handle them is with a permanent solution but it should be done out of sad necessity, not gleeful wrath."

Charlie grinned happily. "See," she gushed. "I always knew Omegáres were conduits of the Omadonna and you're living proof, Dean. You're just too darned good for this world. You kind of shame me for feeling so damned pleased with myself over the taser thing."

Dean chuckled. "Don't kid yourself, Charlie. It's only because I feel so intensely... satisfied... by the natural justice you dished out to him that I can regard the entire situation dispassionately."

Bobby grunted his agreement. "Sheriff Mills did mention that castration might have to be applied as a medical necessity rather than a punishment, though the final decision will ultimately be in the hands of the surgeon treating his burns. Apparently, even an Alpha's superlative healing abilities might not compensate for the amount of damage you were 'regrettably' forced to apply to his genitalia. "

"What a shame," Charlie said, with a wicked grin.

Mary mirrored her satisfaction.

Dean frowned at the two women. "You know it beats me, sometimes, why everyone has such a hard on over the potential danger of Alpha males. I'm absolutely convinced there is nothing as dangerous as Beta females in fully fledged protection mode."

Bobby harrumphed and nodded at Dean. "You're not wrong," he agreed. "But whatever happens at the hospital tonight, it's unlikely any of us will see Metatron again."

"Unlikely isn't good enough," Mary stated firmly. "You're not going back to school until we know for sure, Dean."

"Considering how I'm probably going to feel tomorrow morning, I doubt it will be an issue," Dean replied. "It's not hurting too bad at the minute but I'm pretty sure it will hurt like hell after I stiffen up and my adrenaline wears off."

"I can't see Auntie Pat letting me attend either for at least the rest of the week, once she finds out and...well, Gilda's dad is probably going to pull her from school entirely regardless of what happens to Metatron," she said, with a sad sniffle.

"I'm sorry," Dean said, knowing how much Charlie liked the blonde.

Charlie just offered a 'what can you do' shrug.

Sam looked up from his intense study of the wood whorls in the table, his dark furious eyes sparking with red fire. "If the stupid bastard dares to show his face again, I'll kill him," he said simply, the words more frightening for their absolute promise.

"SAM," Mary protested, even as Dean flinched from the display of Alpha fury.

"It can't stand," Sam continued, his tone coldly alien, dripping with malice despite the peculiarly blank expression on his face. "He touched what is mine."

Dean shivered a little at the possessive words, understanding Sam was not referring to him as his 'brother'. To avoid his mother exploding with worried fury, particularly in front of Charlie, Dean quickly diverted the conversation. "Yeah, about that," he said. "I don't understand HOW he hurt me at all." He looked at Bobby with not a little petulance in his expression. "You said an Alpha would rather mount a Beta, and that makes sense, particularly because Metatron already had a thing for Gilda and had a fucked-up idea that knocking her up would stave off his 'rage', so it makes perfect sense for several reasons that he chose her rather than me. But how could he hurt me at all? I know you said an Alpha doesn't naturally know my scent indicates an Omegá but surely, at some level, he still should have sensed I have a fertile womb. Even subconsciously, he should have seen me as a potential mate, not a rival."

Bobby shrugged, "Maybe it all happened too fast," he suggested. "The way you describe it, Metatron didn't actually attack you. You just got in his way and although I'm surprised he actually hit you, he might have just struck you back in self-defence because you punched him first."

"I don't think so," Charlie pondered thoughtfully. "Dean managed to reason with him. I thought he'd actually talked him down. Metatron was backing off, like he would leave, but then Dean touched Gilda, pushing her to go home, and that's when the rage hit. It was kind of like Metatron thought he was another Alpha trying to steal his 'mate'. He just exploded with fury and that makes no sense 'cos if the 'rage' is all about instincts, and at that point all reason or thought gets cut off so his preconceived ideas would have been irrelevant, how could Metatron possibly have instinctively thought Dean was an Alpha at that precise moment?"

"Oh shit," Sam gasped, the colour draining from his face and his petulant fury clearly and obviously being replaced by an expression of guilt.

"Sam?" Mary growled questioningly.

"What did you do, Sammy?" Dean demanded.

Sam gulped and shuffled awkwardly, refusing to meet his eyes.

"What did you do?" Dean repeated, firmly.

"I was just trying to help. It was supposed to protect you," Sam muttered.

"What was? What are you talking about?"

Sam finally met his gaze, his eyes filled with tears.

"It's my fault. Everything's my fault. If I hadn't called Pops we wouldn't even be here. We'd still be in Lawrence where there weren't any Alphas and you were safe and...and... you wouldn't... wouldn't even let me say sorry. You just kept saying everything was okay and it didn't matter and you forgave me but...but I didn't want you to forgive me, Dean, I wanted to put things right."

"What did you do?" Dean repeated yet again, but his voice had softened from a strident demand to a softer coaxing of Sam's confession.

"Mr Al'asfar he... he has this medicine, this drug, it's some kind of new government program for Alphas. It's still a huge secret because it's not been perfected yet but it's supposed to control Rut Rage and...and all the advanced placement schemes are being used to find Alphas they can test the medicine on. Not just any Alphas, though, because they need some particular kind of test subjects while they're perfecting it. Special ones. That's why Metatron got thrown out, even though he presented, 'cos Mr Al'asfar said he wasn't going to be suitable for the testing."

"You're telling me your teacher is wanting to use you, without my knowledge and permission, in some kind of clinical trial for a new drug?" Mary thundered.

"He said you wouldn't allow me to do it," Sam sniffled, "but that it would make you safe so I should do it anyway and just keep it a secret. And I haven't actually taken any of it. None of us have, yet, because we haven't hit the rage yet so Mr Al'asfar says we might as well wait and give the scientists more time to work on it as they test it elsewhere and then tweak it to work better."

"Not that this isn't fascinating," Charlie interrupted, "but can we get to the point of how this possibly could have affected Dean."

Sam flushed and mumbled "Istolesomeofitandgaveittohim..."

"WHAT?" Bobby roared, his eyes blazing. "You did what?"

Sam cowered and blurted, "I just wanted to protect him. Mr Al'asfar said it stopped rut rage so I thought if anyone ever attacked Dean and he was wearing it, it would...would stop them."

"Well, clearly it didn't work," Mary snapped "but however stupid you were to think that anything would, it's not the reason he was attacked either."

"Oh, I wouldn't be so sure of that," Charlie interrupted. "Dean told me he didn't know a lot about being an Omegá so is it safe to assume none of you know a lot about Packs at all?"

"Do you?" Mary challenged.

"Not that much, but I do have a pretty good idea of how Packs avoid rut rage and if the government are working on some kind of experimental drug then I imagine it has to be based on the same principle. Primá pheromones."

Sam nodded. "Yeah, she's right. Mr Al'asfar said Primáres control rut rage chemically and the drug is supposed to work the same way, but obviously it's total crap and all it did was make Dean smell like an Alpha and that's why Metatron thought he was a rival not a mate. So it's my fault he got hurt," he confessed miserably.

"I got hurt because Metatron is a rapey douche, and I was standing in his way," Dean insisted, "and I would have been there regardless of whether or not you had fallen for Azazel's snake oil. So 'maybe' Charlie is right that Metatron was going to back down. Maybe she isn't. I sure as hell didn't think he would stop. I was just hoping to give Gilda a head start before he attacked."

"Do Primáres even smell the same as Alphas?" Mary queried.

"I doubt it, but as long as the fake Primá pheromones contain androstadienone, then I suppose Dean would definitely have smelt 100% male," Charlie said, "so that would have been enough to conceal his designation and confuse Metatron's instinctive response to him."

"I'm honestly not seeing a downside here," Dean admitted. "I'm mega pissed that this Azazel Al'asfar fucktard thinks he can use my brother as a guinea pig and I'm not happy Sam did this behind my back but I'm all for the idea of smelling like an Alpha. I'd rather have a fist in my face than a cock in my cu.."

"Say that word in this house and I swear I'll wash your mouth out with soap," Mary interrupted quickly. "And I agree, though I'm still mad with you, Sam, for doing it behind our backs. I know you meant well but good intentions are no excuse for stupidity. At some point you're going to have to start growing up and actually thinking before you act."

"So how did you dose me up?" Dean asked, remarkably cheerfully. "I bet you put it in my shower gel, huh?"

Sam shook his head, still staring doubtfully at his brother like he couldn't quite believe Dean was taking it so well. "I only managed to get a tiny little bit of it, so I put it in the necklace I gave you for Shab-e Yalda. It was months ago, though, so I'm surprised it's still got enough smell left to do anything."

"Well, pheromones are really subtle things. They're only usually noticeable subconsciously," Charlie pointed out. "Maybe the effect lingers."

Dean, though, had frozen in shock. Shab-e Yalda. He remembered the feeling that had come over him, the whole total loss of self control, the way he'd lost himself for the first time to being an Omegá. Had the necklace been to blame? Had it been Primá pheromones to blame?

And if 'fake' pheromones had that kind of effect on him, how the hell would a sniff of a real Primá affect him?

"I've got a really bad feeling about this teacher," Bobby interrupted, glowering thoughtfully. "If there was anything legitimate about this drug, Metatron should have been the first candidate to try it on. What supposedly made him unsuitable?"

"Maybe that he's batshit crazy?" Charlie suggested.

"That'd probably do it," Dean agreed. "If the government are still working on perfecting it, I don't suppose any data from an insane test subject would be valid."

Bobby shook his head slowly. "It smells to me. I don't like it at all. I think something else is going on here. If they really have a viable solution to prevent rut rage, why aren't they shouting about it from the rooftops? In fact, why wouldn't they ask for the Packs to help them create it? I don't see why the Packs would refuse to help because if they could solve the issue of teen Alphas, the government wouldn't need to keep hold of Omegáres like Dean."

"You're right," Charlie agreed. "The Packs would see it in their own interest to help, so it makes absolutely no sense to act behind their backs unless something else is going on here. But I can't even imagine what else the government could really be up to."

"Well, whatever they're planning, I'm darned well going to stop it," Mary snarled. "I'm going to tell that teacher exactly where to stick his experiments."

"Wouldn't that bring unwanted attention to Dean, maybe?" Charlie suggested cautiously.

"She's right," Bobby said. "If this guy is working for the government, we need to keep away from him, keep quiet and just hope that Sam isn't stupid enough to actually take this damned drug if he's offered it."

Sam flushed and dipped his head with embarrassment. "I promise I won't."

"You'd better not or I'll kick your ass," Dean warned. "And if you ever do something like this again, I'll definitely be pissed. I get that you wanted to 'protect' me, but sneaking around behind my back isn't the way to do it."

Sam nodded, clearly chastised, and Dean could only leave it at that, hoping the lesson had been learned but dreading that Sam's stupid, impetuous behaviour was just a symptom of his being an Alpha and, if so, he had a horrible feeling this wasn't going to be the last time his brother unwittingly put him in harm's way.


	47. Chapter Forty Four

Unlike the Asiatic Antipodes, who had been sporadically at War with the American Union for over three hundred years, the Chinese Dynasty had always been a source of fascinating mystery rather than conflict.

Although Chinese society had diverted from traditional Pack values perhaps a little less than the other large continents had, the particular nature of its diversions were peculiarly unique.

There was, effectively, a single Pack in China if one accepted that the true definition of a Pack was that it was necessarily overseen by a Primá. In China there was never more than one adult Primá at a time. This singular Primá styled himself an Emperor and ruled his people under their firmly established belief that he was the living embodiment of the All-Father. And although that Emperor Primá inevitably sired many Primá sons by virtue of his dozens of Omegá wives, only one single pup ever survived to full adulthood in order to inherit his Sire's crown and mantle of godhood.

Naturally, the selection process of that single survivor usually involved a lot of poison, intrigue and literal backstabbing between the warring siblings. It was rare for the Chinese Primá to retain his rule (and life) for more than three or four decades before being permanently displaced since it was unlikely that any heir who had secured his position via the act of murdering so many of his siblings would be of a personality to then patiently wait to take his Sire's place on the throne of 'divinity'.

The Omegáren wives rendered barren by the death of their singular mate would be buried with him in vast, elaborate underground tombs. If the successor was of a lenient nature, he might provide them with the mercy of poison. If not, they would simply slowly starve or suffocate after the tomb was sealed over them.

One might imagine from such a terrible fated demise that Omegáres were no more valued in China than in Free Beta societies but in reality, the Chinese Omegáres were feted as living goddesses and were treated accordingly during their privileged, if woefully short, lives.

Each of the Omegá wives of the reigning Emperor were provided with an individual, ornately furnished, gold and jewel encrusted temple, set amongst vast formal gardens, with a small army of Alpha guards for their protection and amusement and also a generous entourage of Beta servants to attend their every whim. The temples were scattered widely around the vast country, so that each province had several places of worship and the Emperor Primá consequently spent the majority of his reigning years travelling ceaselessly between the temples, visiting each of his wives at least several times a year and thereby ensuring a steady distribution of his pheromones throughout his whole empire.

The largest consequence of this unique development of Chinese culture was its terrible, crippling, financial impact on its people. The cost of showering such incredible largesse on the Omegáres, not to mention the phenomenal expense of constantly moving the entire Imperial court from temple to temple to attend upon the Emperor's personal needs, effectively ensured that over 95% of the Chinese population barely eked out an existence on, or even below, the poverty line. So sickness, starvation and suffering were rife amongst the common Chinese Betas. Even Beta suffrage in China merely afforded the right to suffer. The Chinese 'All-Father' was certainly not perceived by his subjects as a merciful and loving god, but instead as a cruel taskmaster who offered his rewards in heaven rather than on the earthly plain of existence.

When the world was more insular, the Chinese culture was merely a source of curiosity. In the modern world, where even the most remote and peculiar societies were physically accessible to travellers and traders, the Chinese culture was also a source of most of the world's particularly virulent diseases.

Three times in the past forty years, epidemics had been birthed amongst the poorest of Chinese society before spreading worldwide.

In the early summer of Dean's fifteenth year, in a small village in China, a viral organism so small it could not be seen by the naked eye underwent a tiny mutation and, finding conditions that supported and encouraged its growth within avian hosts, the virus continued to grow and mutate further, spreading through a myriad of members of its host population before making a cross species leap into a Beta female who happened to be suffering a compromised immune system and a bad case of influenza at the time she became infected. The virus adapted rapidly both to its new host species and the considerable improvement in its transmission mechanism provided by the influenza, so , within weeks, sneeze by sneeze, it spread through a sufficient swarth of the native human population that it was, perhaps, inevitable that it would eventually find itself hosted within Betas visiting from other countries.

By late fall, the world's media had latched on to the existence of this new strain of flu and had fanned the flames of panic with dire headlines predicting inevitable multiple fatalities as the epidemic spread. It, was, they claimed, so terrible a virus that even Alphas were at serious risk.

Certainly, there were some European fatalities caused directly by the flu but the majority of victims in the Western world were those who were already significantly compromised by either pre existing conditions or advanced age. Most did not die because of the virus but simply died a little sooner than they might have done without its additional tax upon their health. Like most loudly touted 'epidemics', the new flu proved to be no more ultimately resilient against the average rude health of the modern population than any other virus that had come before.

In America, 97 people died because of the Chinese flu. All were living within the state of New York. 93 of the victims were Alphas. 89 of them were members of New York's finest. Not one of those 97 victims died of the flu nor even of any previously undiagnosed underlying illnesses.

Every one of the 97 died as a direct result of receiving an innoculation to prevent it.

The government's completely reasonable explanation for this statistically improbable occurrence was that New York, as a focal centre of international travel, had received a particularly high proportion of the time-limited supply of vaccine developed to fight this particular strain of flu. Following the principle of triage, it had primarily been widely issued to those working in the emergency services. In New York, a large proportion of those public servants were, co-incidentally, Alphas.

Consequently, the government stated, although the vaccine had been proven to have a regrettable side-effect of fatality in certain recipients, the death rate was less than a third of one percent, which was within acceptable parameters for an emergency vaccine and it was therefore just an unfortunate co-incidence that Alphas, usually the most resilient of society, had formed the majority of the victims.

Raphael Cainson, Grandé Alpha Primá Of the North Eastern States, had been less than impressed by the argument and had stated, categorically, that the distribution of an untested vaccine had either been an act of gross incompetence on the part of the Department of Public Health or a deliberately targeted attack on members of his Pack.

The media responded with a variety of responses from graphic representations of statistics to prove the government was correct, to strident demands that the vaccine should be withdrawn and the scientists who had created it be held accountable. Public opinion remained firmly divided between both camps for the four or five days that the story remained front page news but, by the following week, the tragedy had slipped from the headlines and, soon, from the minds of those not directly affected.

A government-led enquiry swiftly decided that it had, sadly, just been a terrible twist of fate and no individuals were at fault.

The decision appeared to be universally accepted by a now largely disinterested populace and the entire matter might have been forgotten, if not for the somewhat politically unfortunate decision of the entire North Eastern States to immediately declare their Secession from the rest of the American union.

~

The interview had been showing in a loop for hours by the time Dean returned home from school and he watched it in the privacy of his room because he wanted a chance to listen and decide for himself what he thought instead of his reactions being governed by those of Bobby or his mother.

It wasn't that he didn't respect their wisdom, it was just that he'd spent a day at school being told by teachers how he should be feeling about the situation and he was sick and tired of it all.

Besides, he'd heard that The North Eastern Confederacy, as it had been calling itself since its vote for self-determination 24 hours earlier, had chosen to appoint Cain Crowley as its legal representation on the Union side of their border and it had apparently been Castiel Cainson himself who had been interviewed by CNN.

Dean figured this was as good a time as any to finally acquaint himself with what a Primá really looked like.

On his television, he switched to CNN and caught the interview somewhere around mid-point, and his heart thudded as he saw, for the first time, an actual real life Primá. He was so distracted, it was a few moments become he even paid attention to what was being said on screen.

"People are saying this Declaration of Independence by the North East is a blatant power grab by your brother, Raphael," a thin, blonde reporter said, her stance and expression aggressively combative.

"The people of the North Eastern Confederacy have voted democratically to remove their mandate from the Free Beta Government and gift it instead to Pack Governance," Castiel Cainson replied quellingly, with cold, calm assurance. "They have done so without care for the opinions of 'people' with no authority within that democratic process. Do you have an actual question?"

Dean shivered. Castiel's voice was so improbably deep that it sounded like he gargled with razor blades. The authoritative tone was at odds with his youthful face. He looked barely five years older than Dean himself, yet carried himself like a prince and spoke with the confident wisdom of immeasurable maturity.

"...illegal actions," the reporter said, and Dean blinked, realising he had somehow missed almost the entirety of her question, too lost in his contemplation of the Primá to waste attention on mere Beta waffling.

"Cain Crowley speak only as the representative legal advisors to the newly established North Eastern Confederacy. It is our position that our clients have acted within their legal rights and, frankly, there is no coercive principle that can be applied to enforce a return to the previous Union. Any suggestion of illegality, therefore, is a moot point. No coercion can be applied to prevent delinquent states from leaving the Union other than the invasion of armed force and, even in the unlikely event that force would prevail, it would create an artificial supremecy, it would not regain the right to sovereignty. The individual States that form the North Eastern Confederacy are, by law, each accorded individual Sovereignty which has never been surrendered to the Union that forms the United States. It has merely been delegated. The fact that these States now choose to remove that delegation and acord it elsewhere, is their legal right. States confer on a common government only such power as can be better exercised by a government. It has been decided by the North Eastern Confederacy that the Free Beta Government of the United States is no longer a government to which they wish to delegate their power to. That is all."

~

Although he was sure most everyone else had been watching the news with a combination of shock and horror, and Dean was not immune to feeling the same level of dread at the feeling that events were suddenly moving in directions that spoke of life-altering changes to everyone, Dean's primary reaction to the news report was, hot damn, he should have listened to Charlie and googled Primáres months ago when she'd first suggested it.

Castiel Cainson was, Dean decided, completely and absolutely the most stunning man he had ever seen.

He turned off CNN with a sigh, logged into his laptop and ran a google image search needing, suddenly, to see him a lot more close up and personal than the brief, formal prepared speech he'd just given on television.

Licking his lips absently, Dean contemplated the tousled black hair, blue eyes and sternly forbidding countenance in every photograph and wondered whether Castiel ever smiled at all and, what, if he did, would it look like? Would his eyes crinkle? Would his teeth be straight and white and as perfect as he imagined? Or was the reason Castiel didn't smile because he didn't want to reveal he did have Alpha fangs after all?

Still, looking at his lean frame in his dark designer suits, looking like a CEO of a fortune 500 company rather than an Alphaesque bruiser, it was difficult to accord the moniker of 'Alpha' to him at all.

He was tall and slim, with the lean musculature of a runner or a swimmer. The kind of body that looked great in tailored clothes. (And, maybe, even better out of them). He looked dangerous, but it was the visible threat of power and wealth rather than the embodied threat of potential physical violence. Castiel Cainson looked like he'd rather hit you with a crippling lawsuit than with a punishing fist.

Though rumor clearly suggested he was more than capable of both.

It was his eyes that really set him apart, of course.

Eyes so blue they blazed out of every photo like twin novas. Not a pale, arctic blue but the rich azure blue of a mediterranean ocean. And yet, the colour was not warm and inviting like he imagined such a sea to be. Castiel's eyes spoke of judgements and cold fury. An understated but leviathan power that could crush without effort.

Dean shivered and licked his lips again.

He quickly typed a search for Castiel's wiki-page and checked his personal life. Still not mated to an Omegá, so far. The only relationship mentioned was his Beta wife, Meg.

Dean opened a new tag and searched for images of Meg Cainson.

"Shit," he muttered, feeling bitter and surprisingly disappointed.

Although the whole excercise was just an idle fantasy, his pleasant little daydream was rudely shattered when he saw the photographs of Castiel's wife. She was about the same build and height as Charlie, though her hair was as dark as Castiel's and flowed in soft waves almost to the middle of her back. She had Charlie's fierce expression in many of the pictures, her dark eyes and sharp smile indicative of a strong nature, but underneath her take-no-prisoners external aura she was undeniably pretty in a totally feminine almost delicate way. Dean had learned from his mother and Charlie to expect small, slim females to be the most dangerous, so he did not underestimate Meg's potential for viciousness based on her slight appearance. He did, however, reach the immediate and not unexpected conclusion that what Castiel Cainson found attractive was slim and soft and short and dark and delicately pretty.

He ran a new search for Raphael's wiki-page, skipping over all the rubbish about his personal achievements and honing in on the moneyshot. Personal Life. Beta Wife, Sarah Cainson. Omegá Wife, Mateo Cainson. Dean tapped an image search for Sarah, who unsurprisingly was a small, petite brunette Beta, remarkably similar to Meg. Next, he searched for Mateo.

Shit. Mateo Cainson was a stunning, slim, willowy brunet. Taller than Raphael's Beta wife, but not by much and, really, except for Mateo being undeniably beautiful whilst Sarah was merely comely, they were so alike they could have been relatives. Maybe not sisters but at least cousins.

According to Wiki, Jophiel Cainson had not yet married a Beta Wife but already had an Omegá Wife named Joshua. According to google images, Joshua was a stunning, slim, small, fine-boned brunet.

Zuriel Cainson had not married an Omegá yet but had a Beta Wife, Roslyn. She was a fine-boned, petite brunette.

So it definitely looked like Cain's sons had a type.

And that type was not Dean.

Dean was too tall and too muscular. Dean's dirty blonde hair was too pale. He decided he'd look like a big clumsy, gazomping mud-coloured mongrel carthorse in a field full of fine-boned pedigree black Arabians should he ever enter the company of any of the Cains.

So much for Charlie's theory.

And that put two elegible Primares out of the picture immediately. Neither Castiel nor Zuriel would look twice at him.

A swamp in Florida was looking exceedingly likely after all.

He had just reached that depressing conclusion when his phone rang. He glanced at the screen, saw it was Charlie calling and, for the first time ever, decided not to pick up. He didn't feel like pretending everything was fine when suddenly nothing felt fine at all.


	48. Chapter Forty Five

Mary usually hated winter.

It wasn't only the cold, though that was a large part of it. She hated the short days and the longer nights. The way the colour would be leeched out of the world so that everything seemed monochrome and dead. It was all very well knowing intellectually that the trees and plants merely lay dormant, sleeping until spring could reinvigorate them. It didn't prevent her instinctively shying from their apparent corpses with sadness and revulsion.

There was a syndrome apparently that explained it, a hormonal chemical imbalance linked to the lack of sunlight. Seasonal affective disorder, it was known as, or SAD.

Though Mary was of the personal opinion that any disorder named only after its symptoms was an indulgence rather than a disease.

Still, it was inarguable that she usually greeted the first occasion on which she had to scrape ice off her windscreen every year with the onset of something akin to depression.

Not so this year.

Waking to find the chill in the air and the frost on the car felt like a promise this year. It felt like hope.

Against all odds, they had survived.

In just two more months, her oldest son would be sixteen.

What had seemed impossible eighteen months earlier when Dean had presented had, somehow, been achieved. For eighteen months they had successfully concealed his designation. They had even survived Sam's presentation as an Alpha with little more than the occasional stumble and, with only eight weeks to go, it seemed relatively safe to assume Sam's rut rage wouldn't manifest before they were all safely in a Pack Land.

Planning their next move was proving to be more problematical.

Her own instincts were to move eastwards, towards Illinois or even Indiana. She felt the closer they were to Michigan before they attempted a Pack border crossing, the more likely they were to come to the attention of the primary Pack of the Midwestern Grandé Alpha Primá. She shared the same combination of fascination and dread regarding Castiel Cainson as the majority of fellow Betas. Since the secession of the North Eastern Confederacy, it had been difficult to turn on the television without seeing Castiel in his capacity as the Confederacy's legal spokesperson. He seemed to be on every newsbite and appeared regularly on late night political programmes. His dramatic, dangerous but, oh so incredibly handsome, presence commanded both fear and allure. Mary was absolutely convinced that no one could possibly be a greater champion for Dean than a Primá as fearless as the Grandé Alpha Primá Castiel Cainson and she felt her son deserved nothing less than the very best.

Dean, for some reason, was absolutely set against any suggestion of approaching Castiel. Whenever the Primá's name was mentioned he'd become awkward and flustered and would inevitably mutter something disparaging like 'guys throw their weight around like that to compensate for small dicks' before flushing with embarrassment and changing the subject rapidly.

Bobby thought they should simply head for Pierre and throw themselves on the mercy of Ophriel. He felt that it would be easier to attempt the crossing within their own state than run the risk of random State border patrols in addition to formal Pack border ones.

Dean, though, had his heart set on a southern pack, insisting that Tennessee or preferably Georgia were better options. There were more unmated Primáres in the southern states, he claimed, which would give him more options.

From his research she knew he was correct. For some reason she had yet to fathom, there were a higher proportion of Packs in the south and also considerably less wealth, so the majority of the southern Primáres had been too financially disadvantaged to purchase Omegáres from Beta auction houses, having been easily outbid by their wealthier northern rivals.

According to the information Dean had found on the internet (and she had been seriously impressed by the amount of research that he had put into preparing a graphic representation of his argument on a spreadsheet, all the cells containing the names of the Southern Primáres hyperlinked to their individual wiki pages) there were currently eighteen Primáres in the Southern States, of which thirteen were currently unmated to Omegáres.

The Southern Grandé Alpha Primá, Jophiel, was not one of those eligible Primáres since he was already mated but Dean seemed to think that was a positive thing since he said he wasn't kidding himself that anyone that important would be interested in him anyway.

It broke Mary's heart whenever Dean 'casually' mentioned that his best chance of finding an acceptable mate was to go to a place so bereft of Omegáres that maybe _any_ Omegá would be seen as a desirable prize.

Although Dean was still barely on the cusp of adulthood and wouldn't fully settle into his looks for several more years, it was obvious that week by week and month by month his beauty was becoming undeniable. Even as a young pup his features had been comely enough to literally cause strangers to pause and stare. Dean's looks had, in fact, been a source of fear to her over the years since it was impossible to strive for anonymity when your appearance was as memorable as her son's.

But a pretty pup did not always grow to be an equally attractive adult and a plain pup sometimes blossomed into remarkable beauty, so Dean's prettiness as a young pup might have hinted at a future beauty but had not absolutely guaranteed it.

As he approached sixteen, though, Dean was gradually becoming, simply, stunning. So much so that Mary doubted it would be possible to conceal his designation for much longer even if they tried. In fact, the only reason she thought they were getting away with it at all was that people simply didn't pay all that much notice to other people unless they were strangers to them.

It was human nature to adapt expectations when seeing the same face constantly. Mary suspected that people rarely really looked at the faces of those they were already familiar with. When someone was already known to you, you simply recognised them and dismissed them as 'known'. Nothing short of a dramatic haircut caused people to stop and do a double-take when encountering a familiar person and even that, frequently, only garnered the understanding that something was different, not necessarily an instant recognition of why the person looked other than expected.

Mary knew it was also human nature to sometimes be your own worst critic, so she was saddened but not totally unsurprised that the one person who absolutely seemed incapable of recognising Dean's blossoming beauty was Dean himself. His self-disparaging comments were not the kind of false modesty some people pretended in order to garner complements but, rather, a genuine lack of confidence that seemed to grow almost daily as the time for their flight approached.

It was nerves, she supposed, and that was totally understandable. The idea of entering the unknown of Pack Life was daunting for all of them, but particularly so for Dean whose whole self-identity would be so dramatically altered by the necessity to finally publicly acknowledge his designation.

More worryingly, Dean's nerves were manifesting themselves in other ways. He had completely lost his appetite and could barely be coaxed to eat at all. Whilst Mary understood and sympathised, it was so out of character for Dean to refuse food that she, herself, was getting stressed and, since she was of a nature to be a nervous eater, she swore she was putting on a pound for every pound Dean was losing. If it continued much longer they would have to swap wardrobes because her pants were feeling too tight even as his were obviously becoming too loose.

And Dean, who was normally so laid back and good natured about everything, was managing to do a darned good impression of a Sam-sulk if his weight was ever tabled for discussion, so Mary was having to cautiously tip-toe around the subject despite her growing concern.

Bobby, typically, was being less diplomatic. "Never seen a skinny Alpha," he'd grumble whenever Dean pushed his food around his plate with apparent disinterest. "This rate, ain't no-one at that school of yours gonna keep thinking you're just a late presenter.

Still, Dean was definitely living proof of the falsity of the adage 'you can never be too thin.' Losing weight was simply making Dean look pale, drawn and ill so, if anything, was at least helping to distract attention from the beauty of his face.

~

Planning the logistics of their proposed flight were further complicated by the insistence of Charlie Bradbury that she should accompany them.

"Whichever Primá is lucky enough to marry Dean is going to need a Beta Wife too," she stated firmly. "The Beta Wife runs the Pack Hall and does the heavy lifting so that the Omegá Wife only has to sit around looking pretty and knocking out pups."

"You're gay," Dean pointed out, unoffended by her summary of the situation since it accorded with his own understanding of why a Primá apparently needed _two_ wives.

Charlie shrugged carelessly. "It's hardly going to be an issue, is it? No Primá in his right mind is ever going to want to jump in bed with me if he's got YOU to choose instead. I figure I'm just going to be a glorified housekeeper running a staff of servants to ensure you never chip a nail doing anything menial yourself."

"And that's a role you actually want for yourself?" Mary asked her doubtfully.

"Why not?" Charlie responded with a careless shrug. "I know I'm really smart but it's not like I'll ever get a chance to go to university and get a great career here. I think being the Beta Wife in a Pack is probably about the highest position a Beta female can aspire to in Pack Land and, besides, you don't think I'd be happy letting some other Beta skank get that close to my bestie, do you? As I understand it, the two wives share the rearing of the pups and no-one's playing second-mom to Dean's rugrats but me!"

"I'm pretty sure it's the Primá who chooses his Beta Wife," Dean pointed out. "I don't think the Omegá gets a say in it."

"The way I see it, your mom just has to make it a condition of the 'sale'. She can make it clear we're a package deal. A twofer."

"What's a damned twofer?" Bobby grumbled.

"Two for one," Charlie laughed. "Like a supermarket offer. Buy one, get one free."

Dean grabbed for his laptop and checked his spreadsheet. "That limits the options down to nine," he said, "because four of the thirteen already have Beta wives. But that should be enough. Surely at least one of those nine Primáres would want an Omegá enough to agree."

Charlie frowned and met Mary's eyes and they exchanged an expression of concern.

"You make it sound like he'd be doing _you_ a favour," Charlie complained to Dean.

Dean flushed and shuffled awkwardly, "Yeah, well, it's not like I'm exactly a prize, is it?" he muttered.

"Okay, that's it. I've had it with pussyfooting around, Dean. What the fucking hell is your problem?" Charlie demanded, suddenly furious. She surged to her feet, hands on hips, her tiny frame quivering with such obvious rage that Dean flinched and cowered a little.

Mary made no attempt to interfere, since she too wanted to know the answer.

Dean rallied enough to bite back. "My problem? Well, let's see. In two months I'm about to be sold like an animal to the highest bidder, so some huge-dicked dickhead can own me, can knock me up, as you put it, and then keep me like some glorified pet for the rest of my life and, as if that isn't bad enough, it's going to be even worse if if they don't. What if they don't? What happens then? What happens to me? More to the point, what happens to all of you? You all think it's okay to come to the Pack Lands with me, and burn all your boats in Beta Land, cos you think some Primá is going to be so glad to get me that you'll all be safe there too.

"But what if no one wants me, huh? You think they're going to let all of you stay there anyway? And if they throw you back over the border, you'll probably all get arrested or something. I don't know how it works, I know it's 'legal' for me to go but I can't imagine the government being pleased about it and they'll probably come up with some kind of trumped up charges against you to exact revenge. It's not like they'll believe you if you say they couldn't have sold me either."

"Woah," Charlie exclaimed. "What in blue blazes gives you the insane idea that any Primá wouldn't want you? You're doing all this crazy stressing over _our_ future because you actually think you're going to be rejected? Why on earth would you believe that?"

"Because I don't LOOK like an Omegá," Dean yelled. "I'm too damned big. Omegáres don't just have pretty faces," he spat, "they're petite and delicate and graceful...and...and skinny."

Bobby harrumphed grumpily. "Least we know why the idjit's been starving himself."

Mary blinked with astonishment. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. How could she have been so blind as to fail to recognise how much Dean was struggling. How could she have put his lack of appetite down to 'nerves' instead of seeing it for what it truly was? Yet even as it was tempting to label it as a pointless attempt to change his appearance into something he deemed to be more socially acceptable for his designation, Mary was educated enough to know that any eating disorder, no matter how apparently mild, was evidence of more multi-layered psychological distress than surface appearances suggested.

She didn't doubt Dean was genuinely attempting to reduce some of his muscular mass by dieting even though it was an exercise in pointless futility. Because his weight was muscle rather than fat, all he was really achieving was a reduction in his health because his frame and body-type would need to be at literal starvation level before anyone ever looked at him and considered 'thin' to be an appropriate adjective.

Mary also believed, without doubt, that Dean's attempt to conform to a more normal Omegárean appearance was born less from vanity than his genuine concern that he would be endangering them for nothing if he failed to secure a mate. She wouldn't even be surprised if he was also trying to ensure a good bride-price to secure their futures. Dean was incapable of doing anything that didn't have its roots in care for someone other than himself.

Yet she suspected that denying himself food was also a mechanism by which he was attempting to control at least one aspect of his life and it was that which concerned her the most. That faced with the spiralling events that were stealing any aspect of self-determination, Dean was probably finding some satisfaction in mastering and controlling at least this one aspect of his life in an attempt to steal at least that much personal freedom.

In which case, confronting him head on about his eating habits would do more harm than good.

"I'm less concerned about returning to Beta Land than getting into a Pack Land in the first place," she said, her tone deliberately calm. "Frankly, Dean, you're beginning to look unwell. I suspect that might be sufficient grounds to hold us at the border when we get there even if you're old enough to cross it. I think the government would jump at the excuse of holding you on a potential public health issue so unless you want this whole exercise over before it even starts, I think you need to put a bit of effort into regaining some weight. I don't suppose you have much of an appetite, but I trust you have enough willpower to overcome that for all of our sakes."

There, she thought, as she saw Dean digest her point, accept it and nod his head with determination. Instead of removing his feeling of control, she'd hopefully reversed the direction of its application. And, judging by the small nods of approval from Bobby and Charlie, they seemed to be of similar opinions.

Of course, she still hadn't addressed the problem of Dean's surprisingly poor self-image but she thought that would just muddy the waters at this point. Besides, she was absolutely confident that the minute they crossed into Pack territory, every eligible Primá in the entire country would soon be beating at the door for the opportunity to 'bid' for her son and that, more than anything, would convince Dean of his attractiveness more than any platitudes she herself could utter.

"So," she continued evenly, " if you're serious, Charlie, you need to figure out a way to get your Aunt's agreement to let you come with us without actually alerting her as to where we are going or why. I know you're already sixteen but that's still not old enough to cross the border without a guardian's permission."

"I don't think that's going to be an issue," Charlie said. "Don't get me wrong, Aunt Pat's great and everything but there's a reason she never wanted pups of her own. She's never made me feel unwelcome but I know she'd secretly be relieved to get back to the lifestyle she had before I moved in and cramped her style. She knows I spend more time at your house than hers these days, and she likes the freedom that gives her already. If I tell her you're planning on doing some travelling and have invited me along, I know she'd sign legal guardianship over to you."

"You're sure about this?" Dean asked, his eyes suspiciously bright.

"Just try leaving without me," Charlie replied firmly.

"I think we should aim to set off at least a week before your birthday," Mary told Dean. "I'm thinking we drive south through Iowa and Missouri, then swing east into Tennessee. Jophiel's Pack Hall is near Chattanooga, even though it's strictly speaking in Georgia, so it makes most sense to approach it from that direction...oh, hang on..." she paused to pick up her phone which had just started to ring. She intended to just flip it into silent mode but when she saw Ellen Harvelle's name on the screen she felt a jolt of shock and said, "I probably need to take this."

She answered the call and though no one could hear the other side of the conversation, it soon became apparent to everyone that the news wasn't good.

"So when was this?....and you didn't...no, of course you don't know where we live..I'm not saying you would have... Oh, I see...Yes...Of course I understand...but does he know our new names?...well, I know he is...look...it's okay...tell Ash I do understand...no...it's fine, Ellen. I appreciate the heads up....yes, you too. Thanks....you take care too."

She hung up the phone, her face pale and eyes suddenly haunted.

"We might need to move our plans forward a bit," she said.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter includes character with possible eating disorder.


	49. Chapter Forty Six

 

“I don’t know what to do,” Mary confessed, after Charlie had raced home to try to convince her Aunt to sign the guardianship papers. “From what Ellen said, John could turn up any moment.  It’s already been over a day since John terrorised Ash into giving him our new names. It only took her so long to call us because she didn’t know what Ash had actually told him until two hours ago when Ellen finally was allowed to visit him in hospital.”

“How badly did Dad hurt him?” Dean asked, looking as sick as she felt.

“Not too badly,” Mary said. “He just thumped him a few times but he was concussed and had a small swelling on his brain that needed surgery. Ellen says he’ll be fine though. Apparently he’s more distraught about caving in to John than the assault itself.”

“John’s one of the best bounty hunters out there,” Bobby said, thoughtfully. “He’s surprisingly good with computers considering he’s such a blunt instrument. I doubt it took him more than an hour or two to pinpoint your location and, knowing you’re in Sioux Falls, it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out your actual address.  He’s probably already in the city but he’s a cautious man, as a rule. He’s unlikely to come charging up to the door before doing a bit of surveillance first. He’ll probably test the waters a little, before approaching you directly.

“Besides, there’s still two months before Dean can be taken over the border. I can’t see John wanting to show his hand this early.”

Mary looked outside the window to the dark, early evening sky and shivered, imagining that John’s car was already out there, parked just out of sight-line, like a malevolent panther waiting to pounce.

“So, okay,” Dean said, “worst case scenario is that Dad comes and gets me, takes me to the Pack Lands and pockets the money himself. Now that pisses me off for two reasons; that he’ll probably just sell me to the highest bidder regardless of my feelings over the matter and, secondly, that he won’t share the money with you and Sam. And that means Sam can’t go to University.  So, obviously, we do our best to get away before he arrives at the door. But, realistically, if we don’t it’s a bummer, but not the end of the world,” Dean concluded, with a philosophical shrug. “All the above, as fucked as it is, still beats me ending up in the hands of the Betas.”

“Pup’s got a point, Mary,” Bobby said. “At least no Pack is going to cut him and parade him around like an object. And he’s not going to spend the next couple of years being offered like a party favour to the local teen Alphas. Even if he ends up with a bad Prima, if there is such a thing, it’s only going to be one guy he has to deal with.”

“Yes, well that’s all very well and good,” Mary said, “but both of you are overlooking another very pertinent problem.” 

Bobby frowned with confusion but, after a moment, Dean’s expression crumpled into guilty grief. “Sam,” he said.  “Dad’s going to go insane over Sam being an Alpha. How did I not remember that?”

“I think you have enough to deal with,” Mary said, with an understanding smile. “You’re so busy worrying about Sam’s education and future that you didn’t think about the fact he’s got to remain alive to _have_ one.”

“You really think Dad would kill him?”

“I have absolutely no idea what your Sire might do,” she admitted. “I would have gone to my grave swearing he was incapable of attacking _any_ innocent before I saw him try to choke the life out of you, Dean. Since that moment, I admit I’ve stopped offering him the benefit of the doubt over anything.”

“I think he reacted out of shock,” Dean said. “I’m not excusing what he did, I’m just trying to explain it.  Maybe, if we reached out to him and let him know the situation before he comes to find us, maybe he would calm down enough to think it all through logically before he actually gets here.”

“Maybe,” she allowed, “but since we don’t have any idea of how to find _him_ before he finds _us_ , it’s a moot point. Besides, I worry about his capacity for any logical thinking. He’s a lone wolf, Dean, and that’s not a healthy situation for any Alpha. I think if he’d been born into a Pack structure he would have become a different, better, man but his lifestyle just feeds his mental instability.”

“Bobby doesn’t live in a Pack and he’s perfectly fine,” Dean argued.

“Gratifying you think so,” Bobby said, “but that’s not strictly true. I’m a crotchety, foul-tempered old bastard when I’m on my own.”

“You’re a bit of a crotchety old bastard _now,”_ Dean muttered.

Bobby chuckled. “Granted,” he agreed, “But, believe it or not, this is me being _nice._ You’ve only ever seen the _best_ side of me because, effectively, whenever you and your brother and mother are here I have a ‘pack’ to belong to. Besides, I also have a permanent home. That makes a difference. Having roots and memories tying me to one place offers me a level of mental stability. Your Sire’s lifestyle of constantly moving, never settling down, just feeds his sense of being rudderless. Up until you left Lawrence, the fact of your existence was at least a thin thread of Pack cohesion for him to cling to but I imagine he’s spent the last year and a half becoming increasingly feral.”

“So you think Dad will act purely on instinct and that instinct will tell him to kill the pup of his imagined rival?”

“If he doesn’t perceive Sam to be his pup, that means he will automatically believe he was cuckolded and he’ll react accordingly,” Bobby agreed. “He’s likely to erupt into a blind primal rage. A killing rage.”

“How about we keep Sam away from here for a bit? It’s not like he’s ever here these days anyway. He’s always having sleepovers with Max.  You could tell Dad that he’s away on holiday, or something, and hopefully Dad will be too busy wanting to take me off for sale that he won’t make too much of a fuss about it. You’d have to move though, before he got back,” Dean told Mary urgently.  “Or… or maybe he wouldn’t bother looking for you too hard if he’s rich. I’m pretty sure Omegáres sell literally for millions so I imagine, even though I’m not an ideal Omegá, he’d still get a substantial amount for me. Maybe he won’t come looking for you in case you want him to share the money with you. Actually, if you tell him you _do_ want a share, maybe he’ll be less likely to return to you at all.”

“I’m sure Sam is planning to stay at Max’s again tonight,” Mary said. “They’ve both got an advanced placement class today and Sam usually goes home with Max afterwards. I think, now they’re the only Alphas in school who haven’t reached rut rage, and the only two in Mr Al-asfar’s classes now, they’re determined to stick together as long as possible.”

“Yeah, Jake and Gordon spend most of their spare time making use of their government passes, I think,” Dean agreed, with a sneer. “They’ve both given up even pretending to care about school work.”

“Well, at least that gives me a little time to plan what I’m going to say to Sam,” she said.  “If we leave _now_ , we can’t get over a Pack border and there’s nowhere safe for us to stop and wait the time out, so we’ll literally have to spend a couple of months constantly on the move, driving from place to place, keeping one step ahead of John, until it’s safe to attempt a crossing.  I can’t see Sam accepting that scenario without an argument.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed with a frown. “But we can’t go without him, either, in case Dad comes after _him_. Putting Sam into a hospital would be a sure fire way of making us come out of hiding.  Dad’s a hunter, Mom. If he wants to find us, he’d going to find us. One way or the other. I really think we ought to just stay here and wait for Dad to turn up if he’s going to.”

“Nice of you to say so, son,” John drawled from the doorway.

And Mary screamed.

~

John had absolutely no idea why Dean thought he might hurt _Sam_ , since he’d only caught the tail end of the conversation as he’d stealthily opened the door. He’d deliberately left his car down on the main road so as to approach Bobby’s house without alerting anyone to his presence.  Not because he was planning harm but because he was well aware of Bobby’s propensity to greet uninvited visitors with a double-barrelled shotgun.

He knew, given the unfortunate events that had occurred during his last visit to his family, that Mary wouldn’t exactly throw out a welcome mat.

Still, he hoped calling Dean ‘son’ would diffuse the undoubted shock of his arrival since he hadn’t come for a _fight_.

It took Mary a moment to compose herself but, except for her initial involuntary scream of shock, she greeted him with remarkable poise.

“Most people ring the bell,” she said.

“Well, I heard about Lawrence, Mary. Thought it best to be sure you weren’t carrying before I showed my face. Don’t really want _my_ brains decorating the walls.”

“Ellen called me. Told me what you did to Ash,” she snapped.

“Stupid fucker tried to stand between me and what’s mine,” John replied unapologetically.  “Told him it wasn’t _me_ you were running from, but he didn’t believe me.”

“Our relocation was sudden and unexpected,” Mary acknowledged calmly. “I didn’t see any point trying to contact you as I knew you’d have no problem finding us whenever you were ready to do so.”

He acknowledged her point with a nod.

“Funny thing happened to me a couple of months ago,” he said, with a wolfish grin.  “Bumped into a Beta girl I once knew, name of Kate, and turns out she had a pup after I left town.  She swore it was mine and, gotta say, the kid kind of looked like me but, thing is, although the boy hasn’t presented yet it’s pretty damned obvious he’s going to be an Omegá. He’s not got much there, if you know what I mean…” and he waved in the general direction of Dean’s groin.

“So that got me thinking.  See, it’s pretty weird but I _knew_ Kate.  She was the sweetest, most timid little virgin when I met her. Only girl that ever compared to you, Mary, and I couldn’t figure out how _both_ of you had somehow not only had affairs behind my back but had somehow both done so with Betas carrying the Omegá gene.  I’m not an educated man. I don’t know much about science crap, but still…Two different women, having affairs with two different Betas and whelping two sons that look so like me. It just seemed too improbable to be a co-incidence. Almost as improbable as the idea of an Alpha having an Omegá pup at all.  Maybe even _more_ improbable.

“And so, I started thinking, maybe you _hadn’t_ lied to me after all, Mary.  Maybe Dean really _is_ my son.

“Maybe they BOTH are. Two sweet little Omegá sons. Two cute little walking goldmines and both of them _mine_.

“Isn’t that a funny thing to happen?"

He didn't wait for a reply. "And that got me thinking about genetics. See, I _do_ know it's not enough for just one parent to carry the gene. It's got to be both. And I know Kate had the gene in her family because she told me that an aunt of hers had whelped an Omegá. But no one in your family had ever done so to anyone’s recollection and it’s hardly something you would ever _forget_. But then I remembered your great Grand Sire with his green eyes and it got me thinking that maybe _he_ was an Omegá, but one like Dean, one who looked close enough to normal to get away with faking being a Beta."

"So I came here with an olive branch, thinking I possibly owed you an apology. I thought we could take Dean to a Pack together, find him a good _rich_ mate, leave with a nice payout and settle down somewhere. We can buy a nice house of our own, Mary. Maybe try for another pup or two, see whether lightning could strike twice in your womb.”

John beamed at Mary happily, satisfied that his solution was completely logical. 

~

Whether by co-incidence, divine intervention or someone’s deliberate design, it just so happened that at the _precise_ moment that John was discussing his uneducated theories of genetics with Mary, a similar, though more intellectual, discussion of the same subject was being held in Azazel Al’asfar’s Advanced Placement class. Though not with quite the same conclusions being reached.

"…but the thing is, Sam, that genetics are governed by rigid rules.  The genetic anomaly that causes some pups to be born Omegá or Alpha are variations in exactly the same gene. Someone can carry an Omegá recessive or an Alpha recessive but they can't carry both.   

"Each gene has only two alleles, a dominant and a recessive one. One of the two alleles that form the gene is provided from each parent. In the gene that dictates a person’s designation, every human being has a dominant Beta allele and also, usually, a recessive Beta allele. In very rare individuals, the recessive allele may be that of a different designation but for that recessive allele to become dominant in an offspring, it has to be present as the recessive allele in _both_ parents.

“And, of course, even that doesn't necessarily ensure it will become a dominant allele in the offspring; it might simply move forward genetically in a recessive state. Thus two parents, both with a dominant Beta allele and a recessive Alpha allele could have a half dozen pups and, at most, only _one_ of those pups might, _possibly_ , present as an Alpha. You can see that demonstrated in Gordon Walker’s family, where all of his older brothers are Beta norm. All of those Beta brothers are _probably_ recipients of an Alpha allele too, but they inherited it in a recessive form.  Should they mate with a Beta wife who also has a recessive Alpha allele, they could sire Alpha sons themselves.

“Of course, since the majority of Betas conform to Beta norm with double Beta alleles it is extremely unlikely that the recessive Alpha allele will find an opportunity to duplicate itself and, over time, that Alpha allele will fade out of the Walker bloodline entirely.

"But if the building blocks, if you like, are present to create an Alpha in any bloodline then, by definition, they cannot be there to create an Omegá.  It's an either/or scenario. If the recessive allele is not Beta then it can be Alpha _or_ it can be Omegá. Clearly it cannot be _both_ as they are two completely different phenotypes."

"So you're saying that two Beta parents can create Beta offspring and, rarely, perhaps an Alpha or an Omegá, but the same two parents cannot create both?" Sam asked, his eyes flashing with banked red fire.

"Exactly," Azazel said. 

"What if an Alpha Sire carried a dominant Alpha allele and a recessive Omegá allele, and mated with a Beta who had a dominant Beta allele and a recessive Omegá allele?" Sam challenged.  "That could surely allow the pups to be any of the three designations."

Azazel nodded. "Theoretically," he agreed, "Since a dominant trait does not need to find a match in the other parent to become a dominant trait in the offspring, just its presence as a dominant characteristic in one parent would be enough. But why is that just a _theoretical_ situation?"

"Because both Alpha and Omegá alleles are _always_ recessive," Max offered smugly.

"That’s right, Max," Azazel agreed. 

“But individual spontaneous unique mutations are possible in nature,” Sam countered.

“Of course they are, but for that mutation to happen, the correct ingredients would have to already be in place.  Imagine you want to bake a chocolate cake. If you had all the cake ingredients except for chocolate, you could of course create a cake but not a _chocolate_ cake.  For an Alpha to exist with the capacity to sire an Omega _and_ an Alpha, that Alpha would have to have been born with Omega and Alpha alleles himself.

"So your theory, Sam, would require a completely unique and bizarrely impossible individual to be the Sire. How would it be possible for that individual to exist, a man with Alpha and Omegá alleles and, consequently no Beta alleles whatsoever? That individual could not just suddenly appear from nowhere. They would have to be bred from an entire line of humans who shared that unique biological heritage. “It would require an entire unbroken line of a particular separate evolution that somehow never mutated despite breeding, of necessity, with generation after generation of women who were Beta norms, who would, surely, have added Beta alleles back into their offspring.   And, even if, _somehow,_ those Beta wives didn’t pollute the genetics, if that particular strain of Alpha humanity somehow _always_ remained dominant genetically, regardless of interbreeding with Beta norms; if that unique genetic variant of humanity existed, able to produce offspring that _also_ carried the two rarest phenotypes as standard, then surely by now the population of the world would evidence multiple examples of that variant and Alphas and Omegáres would no longer be rarities but, rather, quite commonplace.

"So whilst, in theory, such an individual might exist, in reality it is a complete impossibility."

“And do you also believe an Alpha definitely can’t sire either an Omegá or an Alpha?” Sam demanded, deciding if the teacher said ‘yes’ then he would be able to dismiss the other reasoning as flawed too.

“No. Despite common belief to the contrary, whilst it is highly improbable, it is _possible_ for an Alpha to sire an Alpha _._ A spontaneous individual mutation _could_ perhaps enable an Alpha to be capable of passing his recessive allele in a dominant form to his offspring but that allele could only be an Alpha allele, so what is completely _impossible_ is the idea of an Alpha siring an _Omegá.”_

Fury rose in Sam like hot lava, flooding his body with rage.  Dean was not his brother. Dean could not possibly be his brother. At most, Dean might be a _half-brother_ , but who could tell for sure?  Maybe his mother hadn’t even birthed Dean herself and was just lying about that the same way she was lying about Dean being John’s son.

Sam snarled, low in his throat, loud enough for Azazel to register though the teacher did not react in any way to the verbal threat.

Still snarling, his eyes clouded with red mist, Sam’s mind raced with anger, chasing thought after thought until, suddenly, everything seemed clear to him.

Dean, an Omegá, was by definition NOT his brother. 

His mother and Bobby had lied to him. Pretending Dean was his brother so they could keep him for themselves. So they could sell him right out from under Sam's nose, sell him to some Primá fucker for money, sell _Sam's_ Omegá to someone else. If, of course, Dean _was_ still legally his.

“Mr Al’asfar? Am I right in believing that the legal status of Familial Alphas is based on established familial connections rather than blood heritage?” he asked, slyly, flames dancing in his eyes.

"Indeed,” Azazel agreed. “It’s enough for an Alpha to marry into a family for him to be the Familial Alpha. Any offspring in the entire extended family would then fall under the guardianship of the Alpha. Even adopted or fostered children.” 

Sam narrowed his eyes suspiciously but the teacher’s expression was so blandly neutral that it seemed mere coincidence that he should have said such a thing just when Sam was wondering whether Dean was even _Mary’s_ real son.

So, legally, Sam Smith was Dean Smith’s familial Alpha.

Of course, John Winchester was Dean _Winchester’s_ familial Alpha, but that was hardly relevant because John didn’t know where they were and Mary could hardly bring up his existence without falling foul of the law. She was a fugitive from justice, after all.  And, anyway, John Winchester, his Sire, had no more claim on Dean than Sam did. Neither of them were actually _related_ to Dean. So both had equal standing in the law and since John had fucked off, and abandoned his family, if he thought he could just swan in at some later date and steal his _son’s_ Omegá without a fight then he’d be in for a nasty surprise.

In fact, there was absolutely no reason Sam could imagine why he couldn’t just take a leisurely stroll down to the City Hall the next morning and register his claim once and for all.

In the meantime, instead of going home with Max as he’d originally intended, Sam decided it was imperative to instead get home and see _his_ Omegá.

~

“It’s done,” Azazel said, sitting back into his seat with a sigh of satisfaction. “it worked exactly how you said it would. Yesterday, neither Max nor Sam reacted even in the slightest to the test stimulus so it was obvious they were still both several months away from evolving to that stage of their presentation. But after application of a mist of the new drug into the classroom today, both immediately showed some clear signs of impending rut rage, yet neither of them lost control or are demonstrating any actual ‘insanity’ as a result of the artificial ‘kick-start’. They both proved capable of holding a fully lucid conversation and of controlling their physical anger but their _perceptions_ of reality have definitely been ‘altered’.

“Sam’s thought processes were quite clearly influenced, I could practically read his thoughts on his face, but nothing should alert him to the fact that his ability to reason has been affected in any way. The new variant works a lot more subtly than the one we tested on Metatron.”

“I was confident it would, this time,” his brother confirmed, his expression on Azazel’s monitor clearly smugly satisfied.  “Some of the work I’ve been doing for the Government has led me down some useful paths for _our_ purposes too but tweaking these things takes a certain finesse. I wasn’t prepared to touch Sam Winchester’s psyche with anything that wasn’t absolutely perfectly designed.”

“I don’t suppose ‘finesse’ is anything the Beta Government have time for,” Azazel sympathised. “They’re all about quick results and short-term weapons. Their impatience means they lack the capacity to appreciate the beauty of long-term plans.”

“Well, New York might have taught them to pay attention to me at least a little,” his brother said. “I warned them Raphael would react badly to being prodded like that but they didn’t want to listen to me, so they’re reaping what they’ve sown.  It’s now going to prove particularly difficult for them to attempt to apply their final solution to anyone living inside the North Eastern Confederacy. Still, they satisfied themselves that a weapon _could_ be created that targeted specific designations so they don’t see the overall result as anything other than a win.”

“I understand why we can’t wait much longer,” Azazel said. “It’s obvious the mother will be intending to run with Dean the moment he hits sixteen but I always assumed the government would stop her at the border anyway. Doing it this way puts him at far greater risk of harm.”

“The Omegá is important,” his brother explained. “But he’s not vital. Lucifer has other options if the worst comes to the worst.  It’s the Alpha brother that Lucifer _needs_.  Your job was never to worry about _Dean_ Winchester. He’s just a means to an end. It’s _Sam_ Winchester who is crucial to our Primá.  Don’t take your eyes off the main prize, Azazel. We haven’t spent almost twenty years working undercover in American Beta Land to have it all go to waste just because you let yourself be distracted by a pretty face. Even if it _is_ a particularly pretty one. Obviously, look after the Omegá as best you can. But if you can’t, then so be it. Might even work out even better for us if Sam has to handle _that_ guilt on top of everything else you’re about to lay at his door.”

“I know Lucifer has longer-term plans for Dean too, Alastair. I don’t think he’ll be that blasé if he dies. I have no intention of _ever_ finding myself on the wrong side of our Prima’s temper.”

“No one wants the Omegá to die, Azazel. Lucifer _definitely_ has plans for him. I’m just saying that everything won’t go to shit if he _does._ Sam, on the other hand, is absolutely critical so he has to be your priority.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And... I've stopped there for today, so you can all take a deep breath and absorb all various elements that have just slotted into place before the actual shit hits the fan.


	50. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is NOT the next chapter....
> 
> It is merely addressing a few things about the direction this story takes because despite me thinking I had tagged it correctly and warned in the preface, it's becoming increasingly clear to me that I have, somehow, failed to adequately convey some critical information.  
> Firstly, I need to re-emphasise the fact that the story is already completely written in detailed form to the end. The fact it's taking me a lot of time and effort to clean its face, smarten it up, correct typos, reformat it and post it in chunks, notwithstanding, even trying to change a future character's 'name' at this point would be hugely problematical.  
> So whilst I really appreciate any comments and questions, I am running out of ways to answer people who ask me not to do something or other to the characters.  
> I sympathise BUT I've already done whatever has been done and no-one gets any take backs now.  
> I'm hoping if you have gotten far enough to read THIS interlude, you will possibly give me the benefit of the doubt that, like Chuck, I had the bigger picture in my head when I made the choices I made.  
> If it happens, it NEEDS to happen...  
> And everything will work out okay in the end.

In a universe not totally unlike the one in which Dean Winchester was born, many people and cultures cling to myths and beliefs other than those of the All-Father and the Omadonna.

In this particular universe, though the differing religions are myriad, several consistent themes run throughout those beliefs

In Norse mythology, the God Odin is believed to have sacrificed himself (though, merely temporarily since Gods can do that kind of thing) to attain wisdom.

In the Hávamál, the sayings of the high one, Odin describes his _gefinn Óðni._ The sacrifice of himself to himself as he hung himself from the world tree, _Yggdrasil._

I know that I hung on a windy tree  
nine long nights,  
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,  
myself to myself,  
on that tree of which no man knows from where its roots run.  
  
No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,  
downwards I peered;  
I took up the runes,  
screaming I took them,  
then I fell back from there

And, in that strange parallel universe there is a parallelism of its own.  For just as the God Odin hung on a tree, his body pierced by a spear, so the Judeo-Christian Christ was executed by crucifixion and was wounded with a spear in a sacrifice of atonement.

The atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ was supposedly the supreme expression of the love of God for humanity. Some forms of the religion propose that Jesus was the _son_ of God, an image of the invisible god, who lived as a spirit in heaven only to be born in flesh to act as a sacrificial lamb, before returning to his place at God’s side as a spirit once more. Yet God is called Yahweh, ‘I am who I am’, a being of eternal self-existence and in John 8:58, Jesus said “I say to you, before Abraham was, I AM.”  And in Isaiah 40:3 “prepare the way of Yahweh ; make straight in the desert a highway for our _God_.” Not for the _son_ of God.

And so Odin and Jesus, perhaps are even more parallel than the manner of their temporary deaths, for both appear to be the sacrifice of themselves _to_ themselves.

But perhaps more interesting and relevant to the Universe in which the Omadonna lives is the legend of  demi-god Agditis, born with male and female organs, whose powers gifted by that dual-nature were feared so much that the other gods castrated him, for they feared he might take over the world.   And, also, an ancient tract from a Greek Historian regarding the god Hermaphroditus: “he has a body which is beautiful and delicate like that of a woman, but has the masculine quality and vigour of a man. But there are some who declare that such creatures of two sexes are monstrosities, and coming rarely into the world as they do they have the quality of presaging the future, sometimes for evil and sometimes for good.”

And so we see that there are both common themes of gods sacrificing themselves to themselves and of hermaphroditic deities having powers of prescience and bestowing the same on their fleshly representations.

And further, in the Christ sacrifice of atonement we can find the following:

Isaiah 53:7, "He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth."

So perhaps it is not surprising to consider the idea of the Omadonna following the same ritual of self-sacrifice, as Odin and Yahweh, or in accepting that sacrifice might require castration, or muting.

But, like Odin and Jesus and even Agditis who hung around to cause a lot more havoc even after being so rudely emasculated, including, apparently, attempting to marry his own son, Attis, which caused the poor boy to run away and cut his _own_ penis off  (though goodness only knows what he thought _that_ might achieve) if one chooses to believe in any religion, one can believe the following:

Gods are ~~weird~~ pretty much indestructible.

It’s that fact which probably makes them so casual about the odd crucifixion, castration, spear in the side or other injury or mutilation that might cause a mere human being to be rather more permanently affected.

Just saying…


	51. Chapter Forty Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a place marked inside the story, after which some rather gory parts are detailed.
> 
> I have placed a summary at the end which contains substantial spoilers. So don't read them first unless you DO want to skip the section.

Mary gaped at John in astonishment.  Whilst she was justifiably wary of his temper, she couldn’t possibly just stand there, in front of Dean, and let his obnoxious suggestion go unchallenged.

 “You want us to buy a house and what? Set up a human puppy farm in the hope of producing more Omegáres for you to sell? Do you have any idea how insane and monstrous that sounds?” she demanded.

 “Don’t be ridiculous, Mary,” John scoffed. “It’s just common sense economics.  What else can you do with an Omegá?  It’s not like they can live any kind of life in Beta Land, anyway. Besides, look at Dean, poor pup’s probably already gagging for a damned good fucking. It’s what Omegáres are made for."

 "JOHN!" she protested furiously.

 He offered her an offended frown. "What? I’m not being cruel. Everyone knows that nothing makes an Omegá happier than having a big fat cock in their cunt.”

 “I will not listen to language like that,” Mary snarled. “And I definitely will not have our SON listening to it.”

 John sighed. “Women,” he said, with a ‘what can you do’ look towards Bobby. “You’re all so damned precious. I bet you like to pretend you don’t even fart, Mary. Well, men don’t mess about with all this idiot ‘polite’ dancing around the subject nonsense, we just say it how it is. I’m not saying this to upset the pup. Shit, I would think it would be a relief to him to know someone actually understands what’s going on in his head.  I know Omegáres, Mary. I’ve fucked them often enough. I know how they think and it’s not fair of YOU to ask Dean to pretend to be something he’s not. It’s just reality that sooner or later Dean is going to be so damned desperate to get his hole filled that he’ll bend over and present his flower to the first horny Alpha he meets. You think a teen Alpha in rut rage is bad?  Try handling a deprived cock-hungry Omegá. No wonder he's looking so peaky.

 “Shit, I'd give him a damned good fuck myself just to put a smile on his face. God knows he looks miserable enough at the minute. Sure looks like he's sickening for something to me,” he added with a firm nod. “Either he's so desperate for a cock that he's wasting away or there's a famine around here, because he sure as hell doesn't look like he's had a square meal for weeks."

 "He's your son, John," Mary spat in disgust. "I can't believe you'd even think such a thing about him, let alone say it aloud in front of poor Dean himself."

 "So?" John replied with a careless shrug. “I can’t see your problem. He's not a girl. It's not like I could knock him up, is it?  But, this is a pointless argument. I can't give him what he wants anyway. The Packs apparently pay at least double for a virgin Omegá.  Maybe even three times as much. So he'll just have to deal with it and keep his legs shut for a couple more months."

 Misinterpreting the look of horror on Mary's face, he added "All the bullshit from the Department Of Public Health saying the Packs like to buy broken-in Omegáres is just that, _bullshit_ , but even if we keep him out of the hands of the authorities, Dean won’t stay a virgin for long anyway.  So we need to get him a Primá to stuff his hole quick, before he takes matters into his own hands.”

 John turned his attention to Dean. “Look me in the eye, pup, and tell me you haven’t been thinking about it, haven’t been wondering how it would feel. How many times have you stuffed a peg inside you and ridden it whilst thinking about how it would feel to have a nice, big, fat juicy Primá cock to satisfy you instead?”

 Dean flushed crimson, dropping his gaze to the floor in mortified embarrassment,

 John threw back his head and laughed. “See, Mary. Poor little bastard can’t even deny he’s a slut in waiting.”

 “Stop it, John. Please. Leave him alone. He’s a good pup. He doesn’t deserve this.”

 “Doesn’t deserve what? The truth? What I’m sure he doesn’t ‘deserve’ is his mother telling him that wanting to be fucked makes him a ‘bad’ pup,” John retorted, grinning with satisfaction when she flinched. “Like I said, Mary, he’s an Omegá . All he wants is a cock in his cunt and a pup in his belly. That’s all any Omegá wants. It’s their biology. There's no shame in it. It's just a bit inconvenient under the current circumstances. The only reason he’s coping with this whole ‘let’s pretend to be a Beta gig’ is he doesn’t actually know what he’s missing yet. But from the first time he opens his legs it’ll be game over. “ 

 John turned his attention to Bobby.  “Haven’t you told her, old man? Haven’t you explained about Omegá sex to her?”

 “I’ve never lain with an Omegá ,” Bobby said, repressively. "The abomination of Rut Houses didn’t exist when I was a teenager, so I fortunately never had the opportunity to abuse an Omegá myself.”

 “Pah,” John spat with disgust. “There’s nothing abusive about it. In fact, if there’s _any_ abuse it’s of the Alpha by the Omegá, not the other way around. I spent most of my rut rage years in terror my cock was going to be ripped off my body by the horny little bastards who ‘treated’ me. Nobody really fucks an Omegá. It’s the Omegá who does the fucking.  You stick your cock inside them and they grab hold of it and don’t let go. They play you like a damned musical instrument until you’re screaming for mercy and still they suck at you like damned vacuum cleaners, dragging your spunk out of you ’till you think your balls are going to get sucked as dry as shrivelled prunes.

 “By the time they release you, your cock is so sore and red it looks raw. And then they do exactly the same to the next half dozen Alphas. And then, just when you finally get some feeling back into your dick, it’s your turn again and they do the same damned thing to you all over again.  An hour of that a couple of times a week and you’re so damned gun shy you aren’t even capable of wanting sex between your treatment sessions. 

 "That’s why the rut houses got set up in the first place. Because a horny teen Alpha would happily fuck a Beta whore twice daily but an Omegá drains you dry for days. Damned Succubi, that’s what Omagáres really are.  Sucking the life out of you via your dick. That's probably why they live so damned long. They're sexual vampires or something. So don’t tell me ‘poor’ Dean is too young to hear the truth. He’s been a potential deviant sexual demon since the moment of his presentation and it’ll only take one cock in his ass to waken those urges and turn him into the literal cock-sucking whore that all Omegáres are. So best to get him to a Primá as soon as possible, before it's too late.”

~

 Sam didn't know why he'd never put it all together in his head before.

 It all seemed so clear now, in retrospect, that it was unbelievable that he'd never really understood his own feelings about his bro... his Omegá.

 Actually, that was EXACTLY the crux of the matter, wasn't it?  Dean was his Omegá. It was a fundamental, immutable fact.  It didn't even matter whether Dean was his brother, his half-brother or no blood relation at all. It changed nothing. Or... or maybe it kind of changed _everything_.  Maybe he'd been so blinded by his mistaken belief that Dean was John's son too, that he'd been unable to see the situation clearly.  The facts, as he'd understood them, had acted like blinkers. Narrowing and contorting his vision, altering his perceptions, preventing him from seeing the _truth_.

 But now, without the distraction of falsehoods, his vision was suddenly crystal. The truth had, indeed, set him free.

 He supposed that was a problem with human manifestations of divinity. By masking themselves in human flesh, Omegáres inevitably caused people to see them as mundane. By concealing their true natures behind the pretence of humanity, presenting themselves as 'brothers' and 'sons', it was they themselves who allowed people to make the mistake of treating them like mere human beings instead of according them the worship they deserved.

 Sam wanted to kick himself for falling for it. All those Alfarsday mornings he'd spent sitting in his Pop's sermons, listening to all his bullshit, had muddied his thinking, led him so clearly from enlightenment that he might as well have been trapped in a hell-pit for how blind he'd become to the obvious truth that had been staring him in the face for years. If his mother hadn't already done it for him, Sam would have been tempted to nip down to Lawrence and kick his Pop's ass.

 Maybe he'd nip down there anyway. Take a good long piss on Pop's grave, just so the bastard knew his plan of corrupting Sam had failed.

 Enlightenment was like the lifting of an immense weight from his shoulders. Finally, he wasn't just accepting his designation but embracing it. He was _Alpha_ and now he understood what that meant, what role he was meant to play.  Alphas weren't tools. Alphas weren't designed to be cops or stupid bounty hunters or even soldiers in the Betas' pointless, irrelevant wars. Alphas were warriors, certainly, but they were warriors of the All-Father. Alphas were the guardians of the Pack. The guardians of the Omegáres. And he, Sam Winchester was _the_ guardian of one particular Omegá, Dean.

 The All-Father himself had gifted Sam with the responsibility by placing Dean, by whatever means, directly into Sam's family and Sam had almost failed to recognise the opportunity and _duty_ he'd been divinely accorded.

 But suddenly it all made sense.  No wonder Dean had always been so protective of _him_ when they were younger. Dean must have known all along how important Sam would be to him when he grew up. Hell, Dean probably had a direct line to the Omadonna himself, he probably had always been perfectly aware that Sam was destined to be **_his_** ALpha. Why hadn't he told him?

 For a second he felt a wave of irritation directed towards Dean but then shook his head angrily. It wasn't Dean's fault. Actually, he felt sick just _thinking_ bad thoughts about Dean. It wasn't an Alpha's place to criticise the whims of an Omegá but to accommodate them. Clearly, it had been a test. A test he'd almost failed.

 Thinking about it, all of Dean's behaviour was probably designed to test him. Dean had probably deliberately allowed everyone to deceive Sam just to see whether Sam would wise up.  Of course. That made perfect sense. Dean would probably continue to test him, so he'd have to remember that, have to follow his new found clarity instead of listening to what Dean actually 'said' to him. Omegáres were capricious creatures, teasing and taunting and testing. Sam wasn't going to let himself be tricked into failing his Omegá again.

 It felt so good, so relieving, to finally understand why he'd always been so fascinated by Dean. He understood now that what he'd thought was jealousy was actually a natural _good_ sense of protectiveness.

 He hadn't been resenting the way other people gravitated around Dean, he'd just been understandably concerned that they had been encroaching on _his_ possession.

 He stopped a moment, plagued by a sudden doubt. He chewed his lower lip uncertainly. Was it right to feel that way about Dean? Like he 'owned' him? Like he was a special, precious jewel that only he, Sam, could possess?

 The red mist filled his vision again as he struggled with the concept, then cleared a little as fresh clarity occurred.

 Of course it was! How could he possibly be a true and faithful guardian if he didn't consider his charge to be the most perfectly precious of objects to be guarded?

 He felt a surge of heat in his groin, felt his cock stiffen, felt his blood pulse with invigoration, yet it was not lust that drove him. He felt a surging sexually driven urge to get home, but it was not a feeling of 'desire' but one of strength, of certainty, of power. He felt literally turned-on by the idea of finally performing the duty of protecting his Omegá.

 Which was, perhaps a little weird, he allowed himself to consider.  He'd always imagined 'rut rage' would be different. Had expected it to be base and animalistic. He'd been led to believe he would become a mindless, rutting animal caring only to plunge his cock inside the nearest available womb.

 But it had all been obfuscation and lies. More lies.

 Sure, maybe if he bumped into _Ruby_ on the way home, Ruby of the perfect curves and sly smile and hot, liquid eyes, and probably equally hot, wet, labial lips, he might possibly tarry long enough to quench _that_ particular thirst before resuming his far more important task, but that could wait, that thirst wasn't enough to drive him from his current path. 

 But his _hunger_ for Dean, and it was, admittedly, quite a ravening hunger now he thought about it, wasn't similarly base. Sure, he wanted to 'touch' Dean, wanted to stroke his perfect face; run his hands over Dean's soft perfect flesh; pet and caress his pretty, perfect Omegá; sniff his delicious perfume; maybe even bury his face in Dean's crotch and inhale his sweet, musky scent until it filled his lungs and sated his soul-deep urge to worship at Dean's altar.

 At some gut deep level, he instinctively knew _that_ was how to adore his Omegá; with his fingers and his hands and his mouth and maybe even his tongue. Touch him and stroke him and lick him and maybe even suck him, like tasting a perfect, delicate fruit.  His cock belonged in Ruby, of the hot eyes and wet cunt, not inside his Omegá.

 Well, not unless his Omegá demanded it of course, in which case Sam understood it probably wouldn't be a matter of choice. But he wasn't even going to let himself think about that because unless he got his act together quick and proved to Dean that he really _was_ worthy to be his Alpha, he doubted the opportunity would occur.

~

 Chuck sat in the privacy of his bedchamber, staring at his reflection in the mirror, wondering whether it was grief that made him suddenly look so old. 

 It must be, he decided, because his skin was clear and unlined, his last three decades barely registering on his features at all.

 But his eyes, his red-rimmed, tear swollen eyes, looked ancient. Their normal emerald hue was dulled to a dark, bloodshot, mossy green. 

 "It's too late," he whispered. "Even if I picked the phone up now, even if by some miracle I got someone to the house in time to stop what happens tonight, it's too late to stop the _rest_ from happening. And if I save _them_ , I know I surely damn everyone.

 "I know what the Betas are planning to do. I know it has to be stopped. I know Lucifer is your agent in this and his idea is so clever and so carefully considered, but it is so cruel. So terribly cruel. And my hands are so unclean in this already, that I don't know if I can bear it. I really don’t."

 “Talking to yourself, ‘cousin’?”

 Startled, Chuck swivelled in his chair, his panicked eyes flashing a warning of liquid gold.

 “Oh, my mistake,” Lucifer drawled. “In my defence though, it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference between you communing with your goddess and someone with a bad case of incipient schizophrenia.”

 “What are you doing here?” Chuck demanded, with shocked anger.

 “Your guards let me in,” Lucifer said, then made an exaggerated expression of dawning realisation. “Oh, you mean ‘here’ as in _America_. Well, I thought under the circumstances I’d better check you weren’t going to have a ‘wobble’. Tonight being the big night, and all that jazz.”

 “How did you…oh, of course… I suppose your little lap dogs reported to you,” Chuck sniped.

 Lucifer shrugged and smirked. “No one in my Pack would ever make the mistake of not keeping me fully informed with all the latest up to date gossip. I’m well aware it’s crunch time.  The only question is whether you’re really going to let it happen.”

 “It’s a bit late to worry about it now,” Chuck snarled. “It was too late thirty years ago. I already knew this day was going to come when I told you about the Winchester line.” 

 "And at the time I just thought you told me your terrible tale of the impending future to stop me challenging Cain,” Lucifer mocked. “A pretty little distraction to sop my feelings over Dad naming _him_ as his heir.”

 “It was that too,” Chuck allowed, “since a completely fair, third share of the Union didn’t seem to be enough for you.”

 “Nothing’s ever enough for me. I thought you understood that,” Lucifer chuckled unrepentantly. “But enough about me. Let’s talk about the particularly cute if somewhat strange Winchester Omegá.  I honestly think the idea of True Mates is nothing more than a fairy tale but if he really _is_ Cassie's destined bride, maybe you should rethink this whole plan. 

 "I have Azazel on speed-dial and I told him to drive straight to Bobby Singer’s place and park up outside the property boundary. He’s got the papers ready.  And,” he paused and checked his watch, “I’m figuring we still have maybe 15 minutes before Sam arrives there.  It’s not too late. I could tell Azazel to act straight away. We could still stop this shit storm from happening,” he offered.

 “I thought you specifically needed Dean,” Chuck said, confused by the unexpected offer.

 “It’ll complicate things, of course, but not _insurmountably_. I’ve secured Sam enough to work things out regardless. I can always finagle the details. The drug isn't perfect yet. Still can't quite hit that right chemical balance with the artificial pheromones. We can't turn off the ‘rage’ completely but we have at least managed to channel a lot of it back towards Pack loyalty where it belongs. Sam is going to be a bit too Uber First Alpha, not to mention slightly bat shit and, whilst that actually works out perfectly for me as far as _he_ is concerned, I don't want to duplicate that in the others.  Still, we've got time to keep perfecting it.

 "I can work around losing Dean from _my_ side of the plan and still get the results I need.  It’s Michael who _needs_ Dean and, the way I see it, Azazel could just snatch him tonight, put him on a plane to Canada, Michael could get what he needs in a couple of days and then we could pop the pup in a helicopter and drop him directly in Castiel’s front yard, none the worse for wear, before the week is up. Even if the government finds out and kicks off about him being underage, the legal wheels move too slowly for them to do anything about it until it’s too late.

 “Wouldn’t that be nice, Chuck?  Cassie and Deanie skipping off into the sunset together, all ‘tru luv’s kiss’ and all that shit? Kind of sweet, in a vomity kind of way. Almost worth the inconvenience."

 Chuck sighed. “I always knew you secretly had a soft spot for Castiel,” he said.

 Lucifer gave a one-shouldered shrug of acknowledgement. “Kind of reminds me of myself,” he admitted.

 “Only in the good ways,” Chuck countered, pursing his lips thoughtfully.  It was so tempting to take the offer. So very, terribly tempting.

 For the second time, he found himself inclined to tell the Omadonna to go to hell and do his own damned dirty work.

 Lucifer checked his watch again. “Ten minutes, Chuck. You’re cutting it fine. Tick tock.”

 Chuck wavered, and saw, in his mind’s eye, the world burning.

 “Thrice,” he said, apropos of nothing,

 Lucifer frowned. “What?”

 “Thrice I will be tempted,” Chuck said, his eyes distant and haunted. “This is the second of three. Perhaps it is the worst. Hard to tell, really, when I know the cost of saying ‘no’ this time will just lead me to facing the third time. Is it better, if I’m going to ultimately fail, to fail now? Or will letting this happen commit me so deeply that it will be pointless to ever turn back?”

 “I honestly have absolutely no idea what you’re asking,” Lucifer admitted. “Or even what you’re trying to say.”

 Chuck shook himself, his expression drawn, his eyes bright with tears.

 “We let it happen, as the goddess demands,” he whispered. “As it is written, let it be so.”

 

~

 Whenever a disaster happens it is human nature to try to unravel it.

 Take a car crash. Two vehicles colliding on a lonely highway. Two families destroyed by one moment of terrible happenstance.

 So you try to unravel the accident.  If only car number one had set off a little later. If only car number two had set off a little earlier.  Perhaps if driver number one hadn’t been distracted by the worry his job was at risk because of Company cutbacks. Perhaps if driver number two hadn’t been tired at the wheel because of too little sleep the night before caused by the restless crying of his infant son.  Maybe the first car could have had a more recent service, thicker brake pads, more wear left on the tyres. Maybe the second car could have been a newer model rather than an old junker with substandard safety features.

 Over and over, you unpick all the factors of the crash, knowing that if just one single domino had fallen at a slightly different angle, the entire edifice might not have come tumbling down.

 So, perhaps, if Chuck had given in to the temptation of Lucifer and allowed him to make the call to Azazel, would events have ended differently?

 Perhaps.

 Perhaps not.

 Maybe Azazel would have entered the house, brandishing his government papers, and been met by Bobby’s shotgun and John’s sharp teeth.  Perhaps his attempt to retrieve Dean would have come to nothing anyway.

 If Sam had not attended his Advanced Placement Class that afternoon, if he had not been flooded with the drug Lucifer was developing to attempt to duplicate a Pack Alpha’s reaction to Omagáres rather than a Free Alpha’s reaction, would he still have acted the same way? 

 Probably not.

 If Sam hadn't reached the conclusion John could not be Dean's Sire at exactly the same time as John had accepted he _was_ , with the same but reversed conclusion that the sire of an Omegá could not possibly have sired an Alpha, would John have reacted the same way?

 Possibly.

 If Henry John Winchester and his wife had not perished in that accident on the lonely highway, leaving an orphaned, infant John to be brought up in foster care with no idea of the legacy he had inherited, would John Winchester have acted differently?

 Almost definitely.

 If Bobby Singer had not been crippled in a pointless Beta war. If Mary had not spent the entirety of Dean’s life programming herself to leap without fear to his defence. If Dean had not spent two months starving himself to a point of physical illness… if…

 But _ifs_ and _if only’s_ change nothing.

 All that matters, in the end, is what _actually_ happened on that winter’s evening in Bobby Singer’s house in Sioux Falls.

 

***

 

 

_Skip to the end notes here, if you prefer to just read a summary of the next part._

 

 

***

 

 As Sam Winchester, known in Sioux Falls as Sam Smith, arrived home, he passed two parked cars at the end of Bobby’s drive.  Had he not been so distracted by his rumination over Dean he probably would have recognised _both_ of them but, as it was, he literally didn’t even notice their presence. 

 So he entered the house expecting to find only Dean, Mary, Bobby and, possibly, Charlie since she had recently become part of the regular fixtures and fittings.

 Entering the kitchen and seeing John Winchester sitting in what he had begun to think of as _Charlie's_ seat, consequently caused him to slam to a confused halt.

 Although, mentally, he recognised the Alpha as his Sire, though admittedly that was not something that he would have regarded as a positive situation under any circumstances, on a primal level all that Sam registered was the presence of another Alpha. 

 A _rival_ Alpha.

 An Alpha who posed a clear and present danger to _his_ Omegá .

 An Omegá who was now, incidentally, the subject of two rival claims over who would be judged by the Betas to be his Familial Alpha.

 Sam had enough mental acumen not to immediately respond to the voice inside his head that immediately began clamouring at him to attack, to protect, to claim. His intellect was, however, unable to prevent his physiological response to the threat. His eyes clouded blood red and his lips curled to reveal his sharp teeth.

 For John Winchester, Alpha, who up until Sam’s entrance had been behaving in a totally reasonable, if somewhat asshole-like way, Sam’s arrival was equally confusing and, also, as explosively offensive to his primal, Alpha nature.

 In quick succession, like lightning fast strikes into his brain, he registered not so much thoughts as flashcards of understanding.

  _Alpha…Sam…Son…Alpha…Not Son…Rival…Attack._

It would be unfair to accord any actual, logical reasoning to the process. John did not look at Sam, register his Alpha presence and then make a _decision_ to surge to his feet with a roar of rage.

 In those fractional seconds, nothing operated except John’s hindbrain. The Alphaesque behaviours honed by his years of traveling as a lone wolf, pack-less and rootless; the instincts he had relied upon so heavily during his years as a bounty hunter, constantly facing life-threatening situations that rarely offered the luxury of stopping to _think_ before physically reacting, had perhaps stolen his ability to even do anything _except_ act without thinking.

 For John Winchester, in that moment, the simple and _only_ truth was that an unrelated, rival Alpha had entered the room in which _his_ Omegá was standing, unprotected.

 So he didn’t just rise to his feet, so swiftly that his chair crashed to the floor behind him, roaring with rage. He, almost instantaneously, charged towards the interloper with blood in his eyes and murder in his heart.

 And it was Dean who reacted first.

 Dean who just as instantly saw the threat to his brother and dove between them, a six foot barrier between _two_ now roaring Alphas.

 “Stop it,” he yelled. “Dad, Sam, stop it. Both of you. Listen to me.”

 John didn’t _mean_ to hurt _his_ Omegá. In fact, instinct cut in enough for him to swerve and brake enough that, even though he crashed into his son with the power of an out-of-control train, the impact was lessened by his attempt to halt his charge and instead of being knocked into the far wall with enough power to snap his neck, it was just Dean’s shoulder, the same one previously dislocated by Metatron, that impacted against the wall of the kitchen and his hip that collided against the edge of the sink, and his scream of pain at the snapping of both his collar bone and pelvis though loud, was completely drowned by Sam’s howl of fury at seeing _his_ Omegá tossed like a ragdoll by John.

 Sam roared and charged at his Sire, his eyes blazing fire, his teeth glinting like knives, his fist powering into John’s jaw like a hydraulic ram, spinning the older Alpha around, causing him to stagger drunkenly for a moment before he caught his balance and struck back, punching into Sam’s midriff with a punishing blow that knocked the wind right out of his lungs and caused him to drop to his knees.

 Sam’s head was then exposed to John’s fury and, in a quick and dirty move more suited to the street fights John was accustomed to, John raised his own knee to smash it into the side of Sam’s face, whilst simultaneously drawing a long bladed hunting knife out of his inside coat pocket.

 “Gonna gut you, Pup,” he swore. “Gonna rip your insides right out of you.”

 It was then that Mary dove forward, shoving against her husband, her light weight incapable of damaging the Alpha but enough, added to her momentum, to knock him sufficiently off balance that his knee struck only a glancing blow against Sam’s ear, enough to almost concuss him but not enough to actually damage his brain.

 Then, admittedly proving that at least _some_ of his higher brain functions were working, John remembered that day in Lawrence when he had made the mistake of attacking Dean before dealing with Mary.

 And, deciding not to make the same mistake twice, he swung the knife in his right hand in an almost absent, casual motion, sweeping its sharp edge across the front of her neck.

 For a moment it appeared he had missed her entirely, as she simply froze in place, her eyes widening with shock, her hands rising to her throat, and then red blossomed beneath her chin, a bizarre thin red clown’s smile that widened abruptly, opening like a gaping mouth to emit a gushing stream of laval blood.

 Like the flick of a vast brush, an arterial spray shot from her neck and painted arcs of blood across the kitchen, splattering across the walls and the door, hitting in such volume that each long stroke dripped individual streams of blood tears.

 She fell to her knees, then dropped to her side, her eyes wide with panic, her mouth opening in a silent scream, as her hands pressed desperately, uselessly, against the wound in her throat, but oozing blood, sluggish now, thickening and darkening, congealing even as it flowed, continued to press through her fingers, driven from her body by the last frantic pulses of her heart.

 And Dean, crumpled and broken, still somehow dragged his wounded body, one handed and crablike, across a tiled floor wet and sticky with his mother’s blood, and threw himself over her, trying desperately to help stem the flow of life from her neck with his sole working hand.

 Mary looked up at him, her glazing eyes filling with tears of sorrow and regret and, with no sound emerging except a thin, terrible gurgle, her mouth somehow clearly formed the word ‘sorry’ to her oldest son, even as the last breath left her and the light dimmed from her eyes completely as she sank, finally, to lie prone on the floor, staring sightlessly up towards the ceiling.

 Dean keened, an awful, high-pitched wail of loss, the sound filling the room, reverberating around it as his frantic left hand pressed and prodded and rocked his mother’s body as though he could somehow shake her back to life.

 “No, no, no, no, no, no, nooooooooooooooo,” he wailed, beating now almost viciously against her breastbone as though to force her heart to start beating once more.

 For a moment, both John and Sam stared in almost equal disbelief at Mary’s corpse and the sobbing, howling inconsolable Omegá who was trying so desperately, so pointlessly, to reverse the unchangeable horror of what had occurred.

 Both Alphas then faced each other in similarly equal fury, both absolutely convinced Mary’s death was the other’s fault.

 John took a step towards Sam, his crimson-edged blade raised in bloody promise, even over the pitiful wails of Dean’s pain and distress.

 “You little fucker,” he spat. “I’ll fucking rip your fucking heart out.”

 And that’s when Bobby rolled back into the room, cocking his shotgun loudly.

 “Step away from him, John.  I swear to God I will blow your fucking brains out if you don’t back down,” Bobby promised, his face crumpled with grief.

 John swivelled towards him, snarling with fury. “You think you scare me, old man?” he roared. “Look what he’s done,” he said, waving his bloody knife in the direction of Mary and Dean. 

 “That’s _my_ wife. _My_ Omegá. Look what he’s done!”

 Bobby opened his mouth to snarl that it wasn’t _Sam_ holding the knife but, before he could speak, Sam reacted to John calling Dean _his_ Omegá with a furious growl, surging towards John in such blind fury that he didn’t even seem to see the knife still in his Sire’s hand.

 And with no other option to avert another tragedy, Bobby fired at John’s torso, but his shot fired high and wide, its trajectory altered by his shaking hands and the bad angle of his seated position, so that the blast fired well over John’s head and only a small number of pellets struck John’s face with the stinging bite of vicious insects, just enough to outrage, not enough to stop.

Like a wounded beast, John turned on Bobby, charging straight towards him, knife raised to slash down on the Older Alpha’s head.

 Bobby fired his other barrel and, this time, with barely three feet between them, he couldn’t miss.  The pellets exploded, taking out half of John’s face and most of his throat.  John’s blood spurted out to shoot matching streams over the room, his own blood dripping and mixing with Mary’s, to paint a tragic, terrible mosaic of death on the white kitchen walls.

 John’s body collapsed onto Bobby, his outstretched arm, knife still extended, buried itself into Bobby’s stomach and ripped downwards with the force of his fall so that the older man was not simply stabbed but eviscerated, and then John hit the floor, and Bobby slumped in his chair, his intestines spilling out to puddle on the floor beside John’s head.

 And then, there was nothing but silence except for Dean’s choking sobs and the thundering of Sam’s heart.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some canon deaths in this chapter.
> 
> Mary, Bobby and John do not survive the events that occur at Bobby's house.
> 
> Dean is so badly hurt that he will have to go to a hospital.
> 
> Sam gets a few bruises.


	52. Chapter Forty Eight

Of Geography, Genealogy and Genetics.

 

To truly understand the politics of Pack Hierarchy, it is necessary to understand some fundamental truths.

One of the primary reasons for _some_ Betas launching the Church of Abel to corrupt the teachings of the All-Father Testament was the impossibility of debunking the religion of the All-Father completely. It would, quite obviously, have been easier for the Free Beta Governments if they could have developed a purely secular State and fostered an attitude of healthy atheism in the population.

It was difficult for the independent Betas to free themselves from the shackles of their Pack past, when the principles of their sole, unified religion, were based upon the foundation of the absolute sovereignty of Primáres and the deification of Omegáres.

And it was almost impossible for the Betas to convince their populace that the All-Father Testament was merely a book of myths and legends based on primitive beliefs, which had been so superseded by scientific understanding that it could be regarded as a mere collection of allegories and parables.

Primarily, because of the pesky continuing existence of the Primáres.

Not because of the _actions_ or even the _power_ of the Primáres, but simply the truth of their existence.  All they could do was confuse and obfuscate that reality by educating Free Beta born pups, such as Dean, to suspect that Primáres were not actually _real_ and were actually just Alphas _pretending_ to be something different and special and that was not a confusion that could be maintained since, inevitably, in some fashion or other, people always eventually became aware that the Primá designation truly existed. Particularly in an age of internet and obtrusive media.

The reason the Primáres validated the All-Father Testament simply by the fact of their existence was Genealogy.

It was possible for even the most poorly educated Beta to pick up a pen, a marker, a rule and a (large) piece of paper and chart a quick and dirty genealogical tree that proved, undoubtedly, that every single Grandé Alpha Primá alive was a direct descendent of one of the six Primáre sons of the All-Father himself.

The reason it was so straightforward, was that there were so few of them anyway and, given that only a Primá could Sire a Primá, there wasn’t a lot of room for confusion.  The direct flow of Grandé Alpha Primáre lineage was easy to follow. 

It worked thusly:

The All-Father fathered Six Primá sons.  Each of those sons were considered Grandé Alpha Primáres genealogically, and are marked as such on the chart. Except for one oddity, that Adam is shown as **Primary** **Grandé Alpha Primá** , since he was the first born son.  Each of those Primáres sired a number of Primá sons (and some Alphas, but they are irrelevant in this hierarchical chart, so discarded for this discussion). So we have a chart that starts with the All-Father and branches into six. Then each of the six have subsequent branches of their own. And in each of those six branches, one son was named heir and is hence shown as a Grandé Alpha Primá in fat black ink.

And so on and so forth, so that in every generation (allowing that a Primá generation is approximately three times longer in time than that of a Beta) there are always six Grandé Alpha Primáres and power flows through those six direct lines of succession.

Hence, although all Primáres are closely related, the offspring of a non-Grandé Primá will _never_ attain that title and the entire line of that non-Grandé becomes an irrelevant branch from a genealogical point of view. So when charting the lineage of the Primáres, one discounts all offspring except the heir and so it would read in textual form as the All-Father begot Adam, who begot Seth Adamson, who begot Malachi Sethson, who begot Michael Malachison, who begot David Michaelson, who begot Uriel Davidson, who begot Samuel Urielson, who begot Seth Samuelson, who begot Ramiel Sethson and so on through the generations until arriving at the modern Grandé Alpha Primá of that particular line.

Each of the Grandé lines of succession were accorded a continent to rule over and, in this world, as the entirety of the Americas were considered just one continent, so that was gifted in its entirety to the line of Adam.

Cain Sethson, chosen to acquire the mantle of his father and be the next Grandé Alpha Primá of the American Union, chose instead to fracture his continent into three and thereby created, for the first time in history, two additional Grandé Alpha Primá lines of succession.

So by the time of Dean Winchester’s birth, the genealogical chart showed _eight_ Grandé Alpha Primáres, three of whom were direct descendants of Adam, the _Primary_ Grandé Alpha Primá and so, in the hierarchy of the Packs worldwide, Cain, Lucifer and Michael were _all_ regarded as _Primary_ Grandé Alpha Primáres.

With Cain’s next decision, to divide the United States into five, he therefore created four MORE _Primary_ Grandé Alpha Primáres, in the form of Raphiel, Castiel, Jophiel and Zuriel, so, by the time of John Winchester’s death, there were a total of _twelve_ lines of Grandé Alpha Primá succession on the genealogical chart of Primá hierarchy.

That is not to say there weren’t other Primáres who chose to _call_ themselves the title of Grandé but only the twelve true lines of succession were a universally accepted truth.

However, moving backwards a little since we touched briefly on Geography, it is worth noting that, although each continent was gifted originally to a different line of succession, the map of the world as perceived by Betas is not necessarily the same as the map of the world according to the Packs.

Over the centuries, logistics have governed a certain amount of mutual agreements on borders. It proved somewhat problematical when Pack territories sprawled across the border of two countries that were politically diverse or even political rivals. So, particularly in the last three centuries, the Packs have been flexible to the pressures of internal Beta politics, moving and dividing their own territories to accord to the international borders marked on Beta maps. 

The Packs don’t have a problem with the idea of that flexibility, because of a basic, inalienable truth. All of the Primáres are directly related to each other. It is, by design, a very limited gene pool that they have emerged from and those ties, therefore, are deep and strong.  Like any family, they have dissenters, they have those who grasp for power, there are ‘family’ members who are an embarrassment to the others, there are Primáres who have warred and killed over territories and, not to forget, the entire line of Chinese Primáres whose survival depends on fratricide. So the close blood-ties of the Primáres are not a guarantee of good behaviour or even peaceable co-existence.

What, however, they _do_ guarantee is that the Packs are completely devoid of any sense of xenophobia or racism or bigotry based on physical difference or geographical location.  In the continent of Africa, for instance, the Grandé Alpha Primá is as dark of skin as any of his compatriots, because centuries of Black African Omegáres have whelped the African Primáres.  In China, the Grandé Alpha Primá has the epicanthic fold of his people. The Grandé Alpha Primá of the Asiatic Antipodes has skin the colour of café au lait.  These differences are seen as what they truly are, irrelevant, because no-one in the Packs doubts the absolute truth that all Grandé Alpha Primáres are close cousins.

And that makes wars between continents and countries and races completely and absolutely incomprehensible to the Packs. 

The Packs pay lip service to Beta political borders and rivalries only because it is simply easier, logistically, to do so. If two countries in Europe are at war with each other, it makes sense not to have a pack territory that spans both. However, the fact that a different Primá runs a pack on either side of that border does not mean that the two Packs are also at war, just because the countries they are located in are. Because, from a Pack perspective, both Primáres have pledged their allegiance to the same Grandé Alpha Primá and are therefore indisputably on the same side, regardless of external conflicts.

Having said all of the above, there is nothing to prevent the warring of individual Packs. Particularly in instances when the rule of the Grandé Alpha Primá is lax and distant.

So in the time of Seth Adamson, the Packs living in the southern-most countries of the American Union had descended largely into the same chaos of the individual rivalries of their Beta-led governments.

In Brazil, for instance, even the Pack-born were as likely to live in the favelas, existing in slum conditions no different from those of any free-born impoverished citizens, whilst their Primáres warred internally for dominance like dogs scrapping over bones and paid little care for the welfare of the lowest members of their packs.

It was into one of those packs that Azazel Al'asfar was born in a small ghetto in Rio de Janero. Though, in those days, he was known by the name of Azazel Moreno.

And for the first fifteen years of Azazel’s life he lived as pretty much a slum-dog, scrabbling around for food and money and barely even dreaming of a better life, except that which he could attain by theft or extortion or even, occasionally, dabbling in small amounts of drug dealing if the opportunity presented itself.

Unlike his brother, Alastair, who had been born with an intellect so great that it was inarguable that he would manage to drag himself out of poverty by the power of his brain alone, Azazel used his own sly intelligence to move through the ranks of his own affiliated gang members, selling Cocaína in the bocas whenever he wasn’t mugging tourists for their wallets or stealing cars to strip for parts.

And that, probably would have been Azazel’s fate, to live and die (probably at the end of a rival’s knife) in the favela he was born in, no different than any other young feral Beta in that city, regardless of Pack affiliation. But in his fifteenth year, everything changed in South America because Seth Adamson died and Cain Sethson, prompted somewhat by his remarkably interfering Omegá bride, made the historically unprecedented decision to divide the American Union and gift the lower third to his brother, Lucifer.

There was nothing lax or distant about Lucifer Sethson’s governance of his new domain.

In less than a week, Lucifer had set his stall as a despotic leader with no tolerance for dissenters and an over-riding almost puritanical fervour to promote the idea of Pack cohesion. And if that cohesion was to be won with the blood of his distant Primáre cousins, then so be it.

Lucifer arrived in the South Americas with all the subtlety of a sledge hammer. He announced, immediately, that the Primáres of the packs in the lands he had inherited had three choices. They could pledge allegiance to him, they could flee his territories or they could die.

It was quite obvious from his nonchalant attitude that he cared less which of the three options his ‘cousins’ chose.

Several Primáres nevertheless decided to test his resolve. Because the Packs were running as mere shadows of how they should have operated, even the Primáres themselves had lost their instinctual reverence towards a Grandé Alpha Primá, even one born of the line of Adam.

It serves no purpose to detail the manner of their deaths. Suffice it to say that it took only four executions before the other Primáres chose one of the first two options and, actually, most chose the first. Faced finally with the reality of a Grandé Alpha Primá in their midst, the majority of Primáres found, to their own surprise, that their lives were enriched by the idea of just getting on with running their Packs instead of ceaselessly squabbling with their neighbors.

Lucifer, being neither a naturally trusting individual nor possessing any inconvenient moralistic objections to enforcing his rule the old-fashioned way, ensured the loyalty of his Primáres was honest by simply demanding that every Primá who pledged allegiance arrived in an entourage with their First Alphas. Lucifer then proceeded to demand an individual pledge of allegiance from each of the Alphas.

So, one by one, each Primá was obliged to stand in Lucifer’s Pack Hall and witness his own First Alphas bending over to be filled with the Grandé’s pheromones for distribution to their packs. And none even protested that Lucifer chose to do so in public, utilising only enough compliance pheromones to ensure obedience and no permanent injuries, because the Primáres were too relieved that it it was not they who were hobbling out of the hall so well fucked that sitting would be an unwelcome prospect for days.

And because Alphas are proud men, and the Alphas of the South Americas had been honed to violence in the same gang-ridden ghettos as Azazel, it was hardly surprising that the successful dissemination of Lucifer’s pheromones then continued without check.

The First Alphas passed the favour to the Second Alphas, and they passed it to the Third Alphas and, so on down the line until all the Alphas made themselves feel better about having their butts reamed by doing the same to those lower on the hierarchical totem pole.

The relevance of this, as relates to Azazel Moreno, is that ten months after Lucifer had taken power, Azazel made the mistake of being caught in the act of attempting to break into a car by one of the newly established Alpha Pack-police patrols in that particular favela.

The Eighth Alpha who captured Azazel in the performance of his act of petty crime did not waste his time arresting him. He simply pulled Azazel’s pants down in the middle of the street and applied chastisement with his huge Alpha cock.

For Azazel, who up until that moment had never considered his rectum to be for any purpose except elimination, the penetration of his virgin ass by such a huge and brutal object had been agonising. It had taken barely a minute for all his bravado and attitude to be ripped out of him, and he had sobbed and pleaded and howled through the remainder of the rape, any dignity torn away by the tears and snot running down his face and the blood dribbling down his inner thighs as the Alpha cop simply laughed at his distress and continued to pound into him until he reached satisfaction and came explosively inside Azazel’s ass, his copious spunk filling his bowels and spilling out of the torn flesh of his rectum to mingle pinkly on his blood stained legs.

So to a Free Beta observer it might have looked insanely improbable that Azazel’s first action, when he was no longer pinned to the floor by the Alpha’s cock, was to shuffle slowly and painfully on his knees until he was facing his rapist and then drop his face to the Alpha’s feet and press a kiss of gratitude onto his boots.

But then, a Free Beta would never be blessed with the pheromones of a Grandé Alpha Primá which, even ninth-hand, were capable of flooding a pack member with such a sense of Loyalty and Duty to his Pack that even a gutter-rat like Azazel was transformed practically instantaneously from a feral self-centred youth to someone who desired nothing except an opportunity to prove his worth to his Pack and therefore recognised the Alpha’s act as not only a justified chastisement for his wrongdoing but also a blessing that had been gifted to him. An undeserved but welcome enlightenment.

And that same Free Beta would probably find it equally improbable that Azazel picked himself up and limped home, dripping blood and cum from his ravaged hole all the way, and on entering the room he shared with his brother, Alastair, announced that, from that day forward, his sole and only desire was to rise within the pack to a status high enough to win the attention and approval of Lucifer himself.

Although, true to his word, Azazel put his life of petty crime behind him, disassociating himself from his gang and returning to school, it is unlikely that all of his endeavours would have come to anything without his brother because it was Alastair’s brilliance that _did_  eventually capture Lucifer’s attention.  But it was Azazel’s own efforts to change that offered him the opportunity to offer his services _too_  when the Pack called Alastair to arms.

Moreno, incidentally, meant darkness, so when Azazel was brought into Lucifer's circle of confidence and gained enlightenment, it was perhaps ironic that he gained a name that suited his new perception of the world

His brother, Alastair, was also granted a new identity when he was despatched into the Free Beta world to fulfil _his_ purpose. 

To Alastair, who was one of four carefully selected scientists tasked with specific roles to infiltrate the deepest levels of the Beta conspiracy, Lucifer granted the surname Lues which was, as Chuck had identified, a designation of his purpose.

Pestilence.

The other three scientists, incidentally, were renamed Guerro, for War, Akaal, for famine and Mors, for Death.

But Azazel was not accorded membership of Lucifer's much vaunted scientific quartet but was, instead, initiated into a group of seven men tasked with more mundane but equally important tasks and to those seven Lucifer awarded the colours of the rainbow to signify their role as the harbingers of hope.

And as each colour signified a different purpose within its cohesive whole, so each member of this larger group was accorded an individual role.

So Azazel became Al'asfar, yellow, the bringer of clarity of thought.

Which was perhaps also ironic, since his primary duty was to dose Sam Winchester with the drug his brother had developed and then, to mold Sam into the man Lucifer needed him to become.

For Azazel, sitting in his car, waiting and praying for a phone call that didn’t come, then listening to gun shots in the distance that confirmed, tragically, that events had occurred exactly the way they had been predicted, realisation that his moment had come to truly serve his Grandé Alpha Primá was bittersweet.

He would not fail Lucifer.

He would perform the role demanded of him.

He would do his duty to his Pack.

And yet, like Chuck and Lucifer, he did not relish what was necessarily to come.

 

 

 

 

 


	53. Chapter Forty Nine

Although he was expecting his arrival to cause confusion and challenge, so was ready with some bullshit excuse for turning up at the house which he barely suspected would fly under close examination, when Azazel entered the kitchen of Bobby Singer’s house, neither Sam nor Dean were in any state to demand why he had arrived so unexpectedly. Dean was too distracted by his pain and grief to care one way or another and Sam was torn between relief at seeing an adult he knew arrive to take over the handling of the terrible events that had occurred and understandable terror of being forced to face the unknown consequences of what had just happened.

“What’s happened here?” Azazel demanded, as though he didn’t already know.

“My Dad,” Sam choked. ‘He went kind of crazy and killed mom, then Uncle Bobby shot him and he stabbed Bobby. There’re all dead,” he added, as though it wasn’t blatantly obvious. “And…and Dean’s hu…”

“Fine,” Dean interrupted. “I’m fine.” His voice was clear and strong, despite the obvious lie. His face, tear-stained and pain-ridden, his hands arms and body smeared red with his mother’s blood. To a casual observer it might have looked simply as though he couldn’t bring himself to leave his mother’s corpse but even without his prior insight, Azazel’s keen eyes would have seen that Dean wasn’t moving because he physically couldn’t move.

“We need to call 911,” Azazel said, looking around the room in apparent horror.

“No,” Sam replied, his eyes glowing crimson.

“There’s no option,” Azazel pointed out. “The police have to be informed and we need an ambulance for your brother.”

“I said I’m fine,” Dean growled.

“Stand up and say that and I might believe you,” the Beta retorted calmly, though not unsympathetically.

“Look, Mr Al’asfar, we can’t call an ambulance because Dean is…”

“Fine,” Dean snarled warningly. “Shut the fuck up, Sam.”

Sam shook his head, chewing his lower lip uncertainly. “We need to tell him, Dean. He might be able to help. He isn’t a bigot like Pops. I think we can trust him.”

Azazel purred internally.

“Whatever’s happened here, I will help you, Sam,” he promised. "I will help both of you, as much as I am able."

“Dean’s an Omegá,’ Sam blurted.

Azazel staggered with oscar-worthy shock, then shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous, Sam. Just tell me what the real problem is. Whatever went down here, obviously neither of you can be held to blame and I will support you as innocent of any wrongdoing. Nothing either of you said or did could possibly have caused this, even if you believe yourselves 'guilty' of something. So just tell me the truth about what happened and I'll make sure the authorities understand that this was fully the fault of the adults in this awful situation. You're just a couple of pups. None of this is on either of you."

"You don't understand, Dean _is_ an Omegá," Sam insisted. “So that's why he can’t go to the hospital. People will find out and take him away from me."

“But I thought you were brothers,” Azazel said, in a parody of confusion.

"We are brothers," Dean snarled. "And so what if I _am_  an Omegá? I'm still human. I'm not just some thing to be used and, anyway, I'm not leaving Sam. He's only fifteen. I'm... I'm all he's got now so fuck anyone thinking they can separate us. We need to stick together, figure something out. Some solution to this shit."

"Look, even if it's true about your designations, there's no avoiding the fact we have to call 911. You're injured, Dean. How can I even stand here and take the time to have a conversation with you about it instead of calling the authorities immediately?"

"Like to see you try reaching for a phone," Sam snarled dangerously, his teeth glinting in clear threat.

Azazel's nervous swallow was not completely faked. There was already enough death in that room without tempting Sam's precarious emotional control, so he gestured peaceably. "I'm not your enemy, Sam. You know me. You know you can trust me."

"I don't know you," Dean snarled. "I don't trust you at all."

"I promise I have no wish to make this terrible situation any worse," Azazel said sincerely. That much was true. He definitely didn't 'wish' harm on either of the pups.

“Are you going to help us?” Sam demanded.

“I want to but I don’t know what you expect me to do. If Dean _is_ an Omegá, then concealing his designation and forcing him to live like a Beta and ignoring his physical Omegáren needs is a criminal offence, Sam. Your parents have obviously been guilty of Omegá abuse. Though, I suppose that’s irrelevant now but, even if I were inclined to break the law too, it’s obvious that Dean needs a hospital so it’s immaterial whether you want to continue hiding his designation or not."

“But he’s nearly sixteen. Mom was going to take him to a Pack. We just need to keep him out of government hands for a few more weeks," Sam argued. "Maybe...maybe he can heal by himself. He's an Omegá. They heal a lot easier than Betas."

"They heal faster than normal, but it looks like broken bones to me, Sam. They need to be set properly or Dean will heal with them set wrong. If he 'heals' around an incorrectly set bone he could end up permanently crippled. Besides,"  
Azazel shook his head. “It's not that easy for him to leave at all now, anyway. Sixteen is the earliest age a parent or guardian can escort an Omegá over a border. He’d have to be eighteen to cross a border by himself.”

“You could be his guardian,” Sam insisted. “You’re a teacher. A respected man. You could petition for temporary guardianship, just long enough to get him over a border. You’ve always told me you believe in legal equality for all designations. Time to prove that wasn't just bullshit, Sir. If you really believe in that equality stuff, you can't just let people take Dean away from me."

"Wouldn't that mean 'me' taking him away from you?" He suggested cautiously.

Sam chewed his lip uncertainly, then shook his head. "It's not the same thing," he eventually decided. "It's the best way to protect him and that's got to be my priority."

Azazel was surprised, though he kept his expression neutral. He hadn't expected Sam to be capable of letting Dean go. He wasn't sure if that meant the drug was working too well or not working well enough.

“I’m not an Alpha and I’m not related to him by blood or by law. Unless he has a familial Alpha, an orphaned Omegá becomes a ward of court and it will be up to the local council to appoint a guardian. I can't just appoint myself to the role," he said.

“I’m his familial alpha," Sam insisted furiously. "He's _my_ Omegá . It's up to me what happens to him."

“But you’re only fifteen, so you will be a ward of court too,” Azazel pointed out. “Although… I suppose it might be possible…”

“What?” Sam demanded.

Azazel pretended to ponder the question carefully. "Well, I'm not a lawyer but I think there might be a way you could stay together. Maybe. Let me think a minute..."

Sam nodded eagerly, his eyes losing their red glare and returning to sad, puppy hopefulness.

"Okay," Azazel sighed eventually. "Here's how I see it. You could legally claim to be Dean's Familial Alpha and insist on keeping him with you but I feel obliged to warn you that that in itself won't help Dean in the slightest because as an underage teenage orphaned Alpha you automatically become a ward of the court and will be sent to a military school until you're eighteen and, trust me, that's not an environment you would want to take Dean into. Frankly, he'd be better off in a rut house. In that kind of environment, it would be virtually impossible for you not to offer to share him with your fellow cadets."

Sam growled loudly, baring his teeth and his eyes flaring red. "He's MY Omegá," he insisted again.

"I understand you feel that way," Azazel agreed evenly, "but military cadets, well, the entire establishment fosters a mindset that would probably change your perception quite rapidly. As much as I trust your good intentions, Sam, I doubt any Alpha could withstand that kind of peer pressure indefinitely. You'd be taking him into probably the most dangerous situation he could encounter with a group of teen Alphas being deliberately encouraged to embrace their Alpha natures and, even if you could stay strong against that kind of pressure, well, God forbid, if anything should happen to you, some 'training accident' perhaps, Dean would end up as a ward of the military and I'm sure I don't have to describe the consequences of that."

"You're saying if I didn't agree to 'share' him, I'd have some 'unfortunate ' accident?" Sam asked.

"Pretty much," Azazel agreed. "At least, that seems to have been the pattern of what has happened to previous people in similar circumstances. But maybe...well, I have a brother who is quite high placed in the government who might be able to work something out whereby you, as Dean's Alpha, insist he stays with 'me' as his foster guardian instead of accompanying you to military school. Considering he'll probably take several weeks to get out of hospital, he could barely face any issues over his designation becoming known before his birthday and then, I suppose, I could try to get him over a border in my capacity as his foster guardian. As long as he was prepared to dress and act like a proper Omegá for the journey, we might get away with it."

"You'd do that? Even knowing you might get arrested?" Sam asked, with cautious hope.

Azazel shrugged. "Like you said, Sam. There's no point saying you believe in something if you aren't prepared to put your money where your mouth is."

Sam grinned at him, his expression akin to hero-worship. "See, Dean? I told you we could trust Mr Al'asfar."

"No," Dean growled. "That's fucked up. You think I'm going to go off to a Pack and leave you in some fucking military school, Sam? Charlie told me that most Alphas don't survive being in the army. They get deliberately placed in the line of fire."

"I just have to go to the school. I don't have to join the army at eighteen," Sam argued.

"You don't," Azazel agreed. "Though, realistically you probably will. Even if you survive without any 'accidents', after three years of being a cadet it's unlikely you wouldn't have been convinced to join up."

"Yeah," Dean agreed. "Three years of brain washing would do that, Sam. There's got to be an alternative."

Azazel shook his head. "There's no better option. Not for you, Dean. So it'll have to be done my way."

"Hang on," Dean demanded. "What's the other option?"

"What option?"

"You said this is the best one 'for me'. So what's the alternative that's better for Sam?"

Azazel shook his head. "No, Dean, trust me. This is best for both of you."

"Tell me," Dean insisted.

Azazel sighed heavily, his expression carefully reluctant. "Well, there IS a completely different way to handle the whole problem but no-one could possibly expect you to agree to it, Dean. I just don't want to put you in a position of having to refuse. You're already in pain and in shock. You're both clearly grieving. I don't want to add to your burden by proposing something that I fully expect both of you to reject."

"Just say it," Dean demanded firmly.

Azazel sighed again and shrugged his defeat. "Okay, but you won't like it. Don't say I didn't warn you. As an Omegá you're considered to be sexually emancipated from the point of presentation. Of course that generally only ensures no one can be charged with sexual abuse of a minor. You still aren't considered old enough to vote, drink or cross a border alone. You're just considered old enough to fuck," Azazel said, bluntly. "However, because the idea of sex and pregnancy are closely related and the legal basis of that sexual emancipation is based on a Pack Law which also gifts Omegáres the right to be seen as fully legal adults in regards to their pups. Since everyone knows an Alpha can't impregnate an Omegá, no Beta Law has attempted to alter that aspect of the law. So as a presented Omegá, you are old enough to insist that you become Sam's legal guardian. You can't be judged too young to act in loco parentis, because a presented Omegá has legally established parental rights."

"So Sam would be my legal Alpha guardian, preventing me being taken away by the government and I would be his legal guardian, preventing him being sent to military school?"

"I'm pretty certain that would be legally valid," Azazel agreed. "As long as some Beta adult agreed to foster you both under that scenario, because, ridiculously, you're both still legally too young to live alone, you'd both be protected from government interference. And, of course, I would be prepared to do that for both of you. As long as you both chose me, I believe the law would have to support your choice."

"That sounds completely made of win," Dean said. "So what's the downside? Why are you so positive I'll refuse?"

"Well, several reasons, Dean. If you want to keep Sam out of the army, you'd have to stay in Beta governed land until Sam is eighteen and old enough to cross a border himself. So that's three years of you being an acknowledged Omegá with all the consequences of that fact being known. You'd have to dress like an Omegá. You'd have to behave like an Omegá. You'd have to use Omegá seating. You'd have to spend three years looking and acting in such a way that no-one could ever charge Sam with Omegá abuse or Omegá neglect. Even the slightest mistake on your part could lead Sam to being disciplined and you being removed from his guardianship and given to another Alpha's care. Probably someone like Gordon Walker considering how much the local government want to distract him from taking over WalCo. It would be difficult for any Omegá to face that but probably impossible for one who has been raised like you have.

"And I have to admit a certain amount of trepidation myself," he admitted with an apologetic expression. "Whilst I want to help both of you, I'd be putting my own life on the line too. As your foster-carer, I'd probably be prosecuted too if Sam was charged with Omegá abuse whilst you were both under my care. Unless I was absolutely convinced you would both follow my advice without question or argument, I'm not sure I'd dare take the risk. I'm sorry."

A myriad of emotions chased over Sam's face, from hope, to relief, to doubt and finally to despair. "It's okay, Dean," he reluctantly said. "I get why you can't do that."

Dean swallowed heavily, envisaging the hellish prospect of the next three years. Azazel was right. The idea was almost unthinkable. It would be like selling his soul to pretend to be something he wasn't and to 'willingly' submit to the lifestyle of an Omegá.

But not as unthinkable as the idea of Sam being brainwashed by the government in a military school or, even more probably, dying there. Sam possibly wouldn't even survive the next eight weeks if the government believed they could get hold of an Omegá so easily as to arrange a simple 'accident' for Sam the minute they had him within their grasp.

So it was a no brainer, really. What was a bit of humiliation compared to his brother's life?

"What exactly are we talking about here? I know about Omegá clothes and pegged seats," Dean said, unable to prevent a shudder of distress, "but are we talking about me being fucked too? Am I going to end up as a party favour for all the local Alphas?"

"If we get the paperwork squared away, no one can touch you without Sam's express permission," Azazel said. "So unless you think he would allow that, I don't suppose it will ever become an issue. As long as it can be seen that you aren't being 'neglected', of course.  Sam will have to take responsibility for looking after you properly. If you aren't being mounted, the only way you will be able to use Omegá seating at all is if Sam either keeps you gagged or keeps your buttocks freshly spanked. Those are the only two ways other than regular penetration that your Flores would automatically open to welcome a peg. I fear that if you ever showed even the slightest difficulty in accepting pegged seating, it would be taken as proof that Sam isn't a suitable guardian."

"So you're saying that even if I'm not going to be an actual Omegá whore, I still have to act in public like a happy, sex-hungry Omegá slut?"

"Sadly, that's the world we live in,"Azazel agreed. "You should take my offer to get you into Pack Land instead."

At that moment, the offer wasn't even untrue. There was a large a part of Azazel that wanted Dean to take the out. The very fact Lucifer had assured him that Dean would make the sacrifice for his brother was one of Azazel's main reasons for wishing that he wouldn't. It seemed pure wickedness that the reward for Dean's self-sacrifice should be so much pain and enforced humiliation.

But then Sam would genuinely be at risk if the government claimed him and Lucifer needed Sam. Azazel didn't doubt his Primá had some contingency plans in case Dean did refuse to stay in Beta Land, but there was a reason a 'plan b' was always a second choice.

Of course, Azazel could just as easily make it happen the way Lucifer needed by force. He had a lot more influence than any genuine schoolteacher, a lot of resources to call on from the other members of the rainbow group. But Lucifer was insisting that Dean had to be offered the choice. He had to willingly agree. And Azazel understood and even agreed with Lucifer's reasons. Whilst the Primá was willing to do what needed to be done, even at the horrendous cost of allowing harm to come to Omegáres, Lucifer was not immune to the contrary instinctive need to protect Omegáres and so wanted, desperately, to at least reduce the long term harm of his actions.

Lucifer was convinced that it would be less harmful to Dean if he could handle the events to come as a willing sacrifice rather than a helpless victim. It would enable him to retain a core of pride, regardless of what pain or humiliation he might suffer through that sacrifice. Azazel wasn't specifically doubting Dean. He wasn't sure anyone could be _that_ strong as to retain his own self-belief and self-worth despite having to act the role of an Omegá  submitting to Beta Law, but he agreed at least with the concept that suffering was undoubtedly easier to accept when done on behalf of someone else.

Besides, if Dean wasn't fighting Azazel every step of the way, hopefully it would be possible to avoid some of the brutality he'd require to get what he needed by sheer force alone.

"I wouldn't think any less of you for putting your own interests first," he told Dean, deliberately pushing his buttons a little harder.

"Yeah? Well that ain't happening," Dean said, decisively. "I'm not leaving Sam. Call 911 and get me a fucking ambulance then do whatever you need to do to make this happen. I don't care if I have to walk into school buck naked and do a fucking performance peg-dance every day. No-one's getting their hands on Sam."

And, Azazel told himself, that was how you got things done properly.

With subtle manipulation, not with threats or force.

~

Oddly, being an acknowledged Omegá in a hospital turned out to be less of a terrible experience than he'd imagined, Dean was reluctantly forced to admit to himself.

He got a private room, dedicated nursing staff and a lot more pandering and attention than he felt able to handle. Even the food was a hundred times better than rumour had led him to expect. Whilst he was in no illusions about being, effectively, imprisoned it was definitely a considerably more gilded cage than he'd anticipated.

He didn't even have to deal with the whole naked issue yet since he was in enforced bed-rest because of his pelvis and so it made no difference whether he was wearing clothes or not underneath the protection of his blankets.

The main downside of the experience, really, was that the doctors would always visit his room trailing a dozen student doctors who wanted to gawp at him and even that wasn't necessarily any different than any other patient was treated except that the students were more interested in his designation than his injuries.

Oh, and the psychologist that the hospital had assigned to him. She was a major downside though primarily because he was struggling to know how to behave in front of her. All she seemed interested in doing was correcting the misconceptions he had developed from years of being 'abused' into thinking his designation was something to be ashamed of. It was her job, apparently, to convince him that he should welcome this newfound opportunity to embrace his true nature.

Which was, apparently, that of a sex-craved uber slut who would only be truly happy after bouncing on a few Alpha cocks.

"Once you are healed enough, we'll get you fitted with a peg," she said brightly, "and you'll soon see that the government takes its responsibility towards ensuring Omegá happiness very seriously. Being brought up so irresponsibly, you've unfortunately developed some awful, though understandable, misconceptions of what it means to be an Omegá. From a Beta point of view I suppose it _does_ look terrible to be an Omegá but you have to understand that you are not a Beta. You're a totally different species with different needs to a _normal_ human being and the Free Beta Government of the United States is passionately committed to the provision of all necessary care to every precious Omegáre it is responsible for.

"My recommendation as your therapist is that although, obviously, you have a Familial Alpha who, by law, will have governance of you once you leave the hospital, I will not sign your release forms until I am satisfied that you will be able to thrive in an outside environment as an Omegá. I will also want to see your Alpha, Sam, demonstrate his suitability to fulfil the role of being your guardian. So as soon as you are physically well enough, we'll start some exercises towards encouraging you to embrace your designation."

The most terrifying thing about his therapist Ms 'call me Becky' Rosen, was that Dean decided she actually believed in every word of the bullshit she was spouting. She really was either naive or fucked-up enough to honestly think she was doing him a favour.

He said as much to Sam when he was finally allowed to visit.

"Apparently the only reason I don't want to spend twenty hours a day bouncing on Alpha cocks is that I don't know what I'm missing," he snarled.

Sam shuffled awkwardly and refused to meet his eyes.

"What?" Dean snapped.

"Well, there might be some truth to that," Sam suggested hesitantly. "Mr Al'asfar has given me a lot of stuff to read about Omegáres because he's really invested in making sure we can manage to stay together. Some of it was crap but there was this one book he gave me that really opened my eyes. Mr Al'asfar's been great. You'd be amazed how good he was in court making sure my claim as your Familial Alpha was accepted. The only problem is that there's still a question mark over whether you can get guardianship of me."

"He said it was legally sound."

"He wasn't wrong, well not under ordinary circumstances, but the hospital are arguing that the 'abuse" you suffered by being _forced_ to pretend you were a Beta might have left you psychologically scarred. The hospital retain some kind of medical veto over your release and, it turns out, they could even say you're mentally incompetent to be my guardian if you're incapable of accepting your own biological needs."

"Fuckers. They're just holding that bullshit over my head to make me comply to their norms of how they make Omegáres behave," Dean insisted angrily.

"Maybe, but if they do find you mentally incompetent then I end up in a military academy like Mr Al'asfar said. They've become a lot stricter about enforcing the rules since the rut houses have been closed in the big cities. If I don't have a family to stay with, I'm going to be drafted. He's right about Omegáres in the academies too. They are considered communal property because the Military regulations trump normal civilian laws, so I wouldn't dare take you with me. So, basically, Dean, if you don't co-operate with the hospital, they won't let you out until I've already been taken away and then they'll probably say you've been abandoned by your Alpha and are fair game anyway."

"Shit," Dean swore. "They've got the whole damned thing covered, haven't they? Fucking bastards."

"Well, you could...could still make a run for the border with Mr Al'asfar. He's still prepared to take the risk after your birthday if it all proves too hard for you to handle. It's okay if you do, Dean. I'm not asking you to do this for me. That wouldn't be fair. I'll manage, somehow. I'll get through it and meet you on the other side in three years," Sam said, his expression sincere though his lower lip was trembling a little and he still couldn't look Dean in the eye.

Dean cringed internally. So much for his determination to protect Sammy. It seemed he was already fucking things up with his attitude.  Resolving to try harder, he forced a note of brightness into his voice. 

"Tell me about this book you read. I've never found anything about Omegáres except government propaganda."

"This book wasn't American. It was written by a Norwegian writer about the Pack structures in modern Norway. Apparently, in Norway all the Omegáres are...well.... really um.. promiscuous, I guess is the best way to put it. The Packs accept that as being their natural state of being so not only do they sleep with anyone they like but their Primáres aren't even allowed to stop them doing so. Which I guess means the Beta Government aren't actually wrong when they say Omegáres need sex, they're just a bit fucked up about how they go about it. Maybe ... well, maybe you would enjoy it."

Despite his resolve, Dean's temper rose. "So you're telling me what? That I don't know what I'm missing? You sound like the damned psychologist now."

"Well maybe she's right!"

"I can't believe you'd take their side."

"I'm not," Sam protested. "I'm just...just trying to...I don't know, just see something positive, maybe. I'm just trying to help."

Dean huffed out a breath and forced himself to calm down. Maybe, he told himself, Sam had to look at it that way to be able to bear the idea of Dean submitting for his sake. Yes, that made the most sense. Sam needed to believe it would be okay because, otherwise, it would be unbearable for him to witness.

"Maybe you're right," Dean offered cautiously. "Perhaps I should try a bit harder to look at things from a different perspective. Maybe it won't be the ordeal I'm assuming. I guess as long as I physically enjoy stuff I can live with the fact I'm doing it under duress."

"That's all I'm saying," Sam agreed eagerly. "Maybe it would be like someone making you eat pie when you weren't really hungry. It wouldn't be fair that you weren't being given a choice but, well, it would still be pie!"

"I'm not sure your analogy works," Dean retorted. "But I take your point."

"And it's just a peg," Sam assured him. "It's not like anyone in the hospital is going to let any Alpha except me anywhere near you and 'cos I'm only fifteen no-one expects me to.. um... do that to you. But, apparently, it's considered practically a mental illness for an Omegá not to want some kind of regular sexual satisfaction so they need to see you are happy enough to...um...I guess.. do that...well..."

"I think the word you're struggling with is masturbation," Dean advised him dryly.

Sam nodded eagerly, relieved Dean had let him off the hook. "Yes. I'm pretty sure that's all they want to be sure of. That you're normal."

"I don't think it would even be an option for several more weeks. I have a broken pelvis," Dean pointed out.

"I know, but you need to stop acting like the idea horrifies you. You need to start telling the psychologist it's something you want, Dean, otherwise I'll be gone before you get a chance to change your mind."

Dean closed his eyes for a moment, gathering strength, telling himself he could do this. He could do it for Sam. He took a deep breath, held it and then released it with a soft sigh.

"Okay, Sammy. Okay. Next time she sees me I'll try harder to appear open to the idea."


	54. Chapter Fifty

Rebecca 'Becky' Rosen was in hog heaven.

She was so eager to get into work every morning that she practically skipped down the sidewalk, the huge beaming smile on her face bestowed on every stranger she passed.

Every penny her family had spent on her education had proven to be worthwhile simply because she'd had the unbelievable good fortune to spend her internship in a small, unremarkable hospital in a little city called Sioux Falls where a God-damned miracle had occurred.

An Omegá, an actual flesh and blood real-life Omegá, had turned up out of the blue in need of serious psychological help and she, Becky Rosen, had been handed its case.

Becky had been fascinated by the idea of Omegáres since she was a tiny child. Where other little Beta girls had dreamed of ponies and kittens and Disney princesses, she had thought only of the strange, unique, creatures whose existence had seemed almost an impossible fairy tale, much like Unicorns and Dragons.

Unlike her friends who had grown up to replace their childish fantasies with those of boyfriends and getting married and having pups, Becky's own passionate dream about Omegáres had just grown and solidified as she got older.

Even her choice of degree had been driven by her need to learn more about the psychology of an Omegá although that education had been limited by the sad but inarguable fact that Omegáres were so rare that even if anyone had ever really attempted an in depth study of the breed, the odds of that person ever actually meeting one in the flesh were infinitesimally small.

And also, of course, under normal circumstances, the few Omegáres that existed spent the brief years between their presentation and their sale to a Pack living in Rut Houses so blissed out on the attentions of Alphas that any attempt at communicating with them was practically impossible anyway.

But because her father, David Rosen, was a senator, Becky had been able to gain access to the Rut House in Houston when she was writing her dissertation for her Psy.D and had met the Omegá who had been housed there. Sadly, the experience had been somewhat disappointing from her point of view. Though it had been naturally fascinating to sit for hours in the safety of a viewing chamber, watching the Omegá treating all the teenage Texan Alphas who lived in that city, on the few occasions she had attempted to talk with the Omegá outside of the treatment chamber it had been oddly uncommunicative and what few words it had offered her were full of sullen complaint.

If she hadn't witnessed with her own eyes how much it enjoyed the hours it spent in the treatment room, Becky might have been fooled into believing it really was as unhappy as it pretended to be.

The conclusion she'd reached for her dissertation, one that had, incidentally, received barely any dissent from her peers as she'd defended it to gain her doctorate in Clinical Psychology, was that the problem with Omegáres was that they were raised by Beta parents, in a Beta-run world, and so were inevitably subject to the inadvertent abuse of being told by the society they lived in that there was something fundamentally 'wrong' with them. Instead of being raised to happily embrace their peculiar designation, they learned to fear their own intrinsic nature so much that they developed behaviour patterns of expressing shame and embarrassment over acting in ways that were perfectly natural for their sub-species.

Becky came to the ultimate conclusion that the Omegáres didn't actually mind being in Rut Houses, they just had learned to 'pretend' they did because they were ashamed of their own lusty natures in the face of more prudish Beta attitudes.

So she had suggested to her father, the Senator, that maybe it would be better if Omegáres could be identified sooner, preferably at birth, so they could be removed from their unsuitable family situations and raised, instead, in the Omegá-friendly environment of a Government crèche where they would be taught from the earliest age to be true to their natures.

She had envisioned a safe, nurturing environment where Omegáres wouldn’t be forced to learn nonsensical subjects such as reading and writing and arithmetic, all of which were totally pointless to creatures like them. Maybe it would even be better if they weren’t even taught human speech since the words of Betas only seemed to hurt their feelings. In Becky’s ideal world, the Omegáres would be raised from infancy simply to embrace their inherent overwhelming desire for sexual satisfaction.  

The crèche would be self-funding, since it would be able to charge treatment fees for all the teen Alphas who would be brought in to satisfy the Omegáres after their presentation and because the Omegáres would have never been taught to believe their behaviour was ‘wrong’, they would be perfectly happy and content to live in the crèche where all their needs were provided for.

David Rosen had latched eagerly onto the idea and had made great strides in convincing the Government that it was a viable and economically sound proposal and Becky had been positive that she would have been offered the opportunity to work in the crèche and be intimately involved in the moulding of young Omegáren minds.

And then the damned Detroit conclave had happened and now it seemed that no-one in government had the balls anymore to deal with the issue head-on. Becky’s crèche, so close to fruition she had almost been able to touch it, was now nothing more than a pipe-dream.

So having Dean Winchester practically fall into her lap felt like the All-Father himself had felt obliged to offer her a consolation prize and, though it wasn’t exactly what she’d wanted, it was still inarguably an absolutely wonderful opportunity for her to practice some of the techniques she’d been planning to use in the crèche.

In some ways, it was even _more_ exciting than working with a child.  Dean was absolutely unique in that it had been raised to portray not only a Beta but a potential _Alpha._ Although Becky doubted the existence of another Omegá who had the physical ability to fake such an opposing designation, the deception being so well-aided by Dean’s strikingly Alphaesque physique, it was undeniably fascinating _psychologically_. Becky was facing an unprecedented challenge in convincing the member of one sub human species, raised to imitate another sub human species, to stop aping the attitudes and moralities of _real_ human beings.

It was absolutely _thrilling_. 

~

“I’m really proud of you, Sam,” Azazel said, as they arrived at the hospital and parked near the administrative offices.  “You’ve handled the last eight weeks better than I could have imagined.”

Sam grinned at the Beta, a pink stain flushing his cheeks at the praise. “I understand how important it is to follow your advice, Mr Al’asfar.  The fact you managed to get the court to accept my claim on Dean _and_ the way you got an injunction on the attempt to take me away until after the question of Dean’s medical competence is settled is absolute proof that everything you’re doing is for our benefit. I trust you,” he added, simply.

Azazel offered him a benevolent smile. “I need you to remember that, today. This is a really important meeting. How you handle it will probably have a huge impact on both your future and Dean’s. Particularly since it’s his birthday tomorrow and I don’t think the timing of this is purely co-incidental.

“I understand that it’s going to be very hard for you, that your instincts will be driving you to resist the idea of anyone touching _your_ Omegá but I need you to bear in mind that you are only granting permission for _doctors_ to perform medically necessary procedures.”

“I’m not sure ‘medically necessary’ is an appropriate term for what they want to do,” Sam sniped.

Azazel shrugged. “You’re right in a way, of course, and yet, maybe, not so much.  I’ve never made any secret of my belief that raising Dean as a Beta was wrong.  Not that I blame your mother, given the current society we live in, but on medical grounds I don’t totally disagree with Doctor Rosen’s arguments. It really _is_ unfair on Dean to expect him to conceal a fundamental part of what being an Omegá means.  An Omegáren’s desire for sex is not unlike the instincts that drive teenage Alphas into ‘rage’. It’s that powerful and primal. The difference is that Omegáres live with that urge, constantly, during their entire reproductive years. So, in that respect, teaching Dean to allow himself to accept that part of himself _is_ a medical necessity.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” Sam said, after a moment’s reflection. “I guess letting them do this is no different than when I gave them permission to treat his injuries.”

“Exactly,” Azazel beamed. “You just have to sign some permissions today. Then we leave the hospital to work with Dean for a few weeks and when they’re finally satisfied he’s ready, they’re asking that you come back and participate in a session or two, just to be sure you’ll be able to act as Dean’s guardian after his release.”

“But I won’t have to…um…you know…”

“Goodness, no. You’re underage, Sam. Although if you were to mount someone at this age because of ‘rage’ there would be no consequences, in normal situations you’re still legally accepted as being below the age of consent. I imagine you might be asked to help Dean prepare himself, possibly assist him by spanking his buttocks a little. Just something like that. But we can deal with _that_ when we come to it.”

“I really don’t get that,” Sam admitted, nibbling a thumb nail nervously. “Omegáres are pretty weird, huh?”

Azazel chuckled. “I suppose they are, though you’d probably be surprised to learn that there are some _Betas_ who find spanking to be sexually arousing too.”

“Really? I didn’t think Betas were into sex at all.”

“Well, as a rule it doesn’t drive us,” Azazel agreed. “It’s definitely more usual for Betas to have sex for purposes of procreation rather than pleasure but, like as in everything, there are different degrees of behaviour within the population. There _are_ Betas who are sexually-driven. They just aren’t the norm.”

“So none of the Doctors treating Dean will be touching him out of any personal desire?”

“Absolutely not,” Azazel confirmed. “Even a Beta who is more sexually inclined than the norm wouldn’t see an Omegá as an object of desire. Obviously we appreciate their beauty but then again we admire the beauty of an animal or a sunset or a particularly nice car. The appreciation isn’t _sexual_.”

Sam took a deep breath, then sighed loudly. “That definitely makes it easier for me to sign,” he admitted.

“Still, although I appreciate how mature you’re being about this, Sam, I think it would be best if you sign the papers and then leave me to work out the details with the Doctor. I don’t want to run the risk of you getting upset about anything. Sometimes, when things are sensitive like this, it’s easy to misinterpret what people are saying. Trust me to handle things the best way for your brother and then I’ll explain everything I agree with her to you later. Okay?”

Sam frowned but nodded. “Yeah, okay. I trust you and I know my temper is sometimes a bit over the top, so I get what you’re saying.”

“I am SO proud of you,” Azazel repeated, and watched with quiet satisfaction as Sam preened at the praise.

~

Becky Rosen had spent enough time with Dean over the past few weeks that it would have been surprising she hadn’t met either his brother or Foster-Sire before, except that they, by necessity, tended to visit on an evening whilst she held her sessions with Dean during working hours.

Now, though, the medical doctors had finally given her clearance to start incorporating physical therapy into her sessions, so she needed written authorisation from both the Familial Alpha and the pups’ joint Foster Parent to proceed.

She wasn’t immune to her patient’s physical beauty and, now it was being less combative in their therapy sessions, she’d been treated to some glimpses of its natural charm, so she wasn’t expecting its brother to be significantly lacking in either department either but, knowing Sam’s designation, she was expecting Sam to have a brute, animalistic quality that would detract considerably from any echo of Dean’s looks and personality.

So her jaw dropped when she actually met Sam Winchester. She had to force herself to remember it was not only an Alpha but also a _fifteen-year-old_ Alpha.  Still, despite being a _perfect_ physical example of a sub-human designation, Sam Winchester certainly ticked a lot of Becky Rosen’s boxes and for the first time in her life she could understand why a Beta woman might be tempted to marry an Alpha, despite them not being _really_ human.

Feeling flustered and less than professional in its presence she was as relieved as she was disappointed when Azazel Al’asfar said that Sam was only going to stay long enough to sign the relevant forms.

She sighed when, that done, it departed the room and left her alone with the Beta man.

“They have that effect, both the Winchesters,” Azazel said, calling her on her attraction with a slightly mocking smirk.

Becky shook herself angrily. “I was surprised,” she allowed. “It’s not what I expected. Neither of them are.”

“No,” Azazel agreed. “They could both easily pass for human. It’s worrying, really, how easily the lesser designations can fool the unwary with their pretty faces and sly, conniving charm.”

Becky blinked at him with surprise and not a little relief. “I didn’t realise you were a believer, too.”

“Like yourself, I don’t allow my personal beliefs to affect my professional work,” Azazel said. “The Church of Abel does ask us to be _charitable_ to the lesser designations, after all. I believe it’s my duty as a religious man to offer shelter to lost sheep like the Winchester pups. Not only for their protection but for ours. I believe even sub-humans like Alphas and Omegás should be treated with compassion, as long as that compassion is applied with a firm hand and we never forget that they are, after all, just educated animals. Not _real_ human beings.”

“Oh, I’m so relieved,” Becky gushed. “I didn’t know what to expect from this meeting. I was afraid you were going to be some dire traditionalist with antiquated ideas that Dean is something ‘holy’. I mean of course it is _specia_ l but its differences are in its unique biology. It’s a scientific curiosity, not a religious icon.”

“I was trusting that you, with your scientific mind, would understand Dean for what it is and would be prepared to deal with it properly. I’m glad I wasn’t mistaken, Dr Rosen.”

“Call me Becky,” she gushed.

“Then you must call me Azazel,” he replied, with a charming smile.

“So, I assume you fully support my idea of awakening its natural sexual proclivities?” she asked.

“Actually, so much so that I have come bearing gifts.”

“Oh?”

“Your Sire, Senator Rosen, is a close acquaintance of my brother, Alastair Lues. The Senator spoke most highly of you to Alastair. He said you were quite passionate in your belief that we Betas do a terrible disservice to Omegáres by attempting to make them pretend to be humans. Alastair was most interested in your idea for an Omegá crèche.”

“Sadly it doesn’t look possible now in the current political climate,” Becky sighed.  “All those poor creatures I could have saved. Still, I have Dean, at least, and the poor creature is in _dire_ need of my help.  I’m only concerned that it’s been so corrupted by its upbringing that it will fight me every step of the way.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a sweet thing, really. It’s been trying so hard to work with me in my sessions but I am pretty realistic about the difference between it _wanting_ to co-operate and it being unable not to fight me as I turn theory into practice. I know the usual method is simply to physically enforce the first few penetrations until nature takes over but I truly feel that’s the wrong way to achieve an Omegá’s compliance. Physical force just reinforces the belief that sex is something that is done to them, not something they themselves desire.”

Azazel smiled expansively. “Hence my gift to you. Or, more accurately, my brother’s gift to you.  He’s been working on a number of drugs on behalf of the government.”

Becky pursed her lips disapprovingly. “I don’t like the idea of using drugs on the lesser species. There are insufficient numbers of either of them for proper drug-trials to be conducted. I feel it would be definitely unethical to use anything on an Omegá because they are so rare it is absolutely impossible that any drug for them has been adequately tested beforehand.”

“And Alastair agrees with you, Becky. The only reason I mentioned the drugs is to explain why he happens to be in possession of a tiny amount of pure, distilled Alpha Primá pheromones. Not fake ones. Real ones. A purely natural substance. Think of it as more a sort of herbal remedy, rather than a drug.”

Becky gasped. “Really?”

“Indeed,” Azazel agreed. “And although they are immensely rare and of almost incalculable value, he has provided a tiny vial of them purely for the purpose of easing your first subject, Dean, into its designation. There is only enough for perhaps a dozen tiny dabs onto something like, say, a peg. But the effect is so significant on an Omegá that I doubt you would need more than one to open Dean’s flores. So you could probably manage as many as a dozen successful sessions of practical peg application without even resorting to gags or spankings. I imagine that could adequately convince even the most recalcitrant Omegá that they were submitting willingly to the insertion of a peg.”

Becky squeed and clapped her hands together with excitement. “Oh that could so easily undo years of bad conditioning, as long as it doesn’t understand why it is reacting that way and, after a dozen sessions, its natural desire for penetration should have been awoken enough that it won’t need more doses anyway.”

“That was Alastair’s thinking too,” Azazel agreed. “If this experiment proves successful, I’m sure the government would endeavour to obtain more of the pheromones for your future patients. After all, the government takes the issue of Omegá health and happiness very seriously.”

“Thank you so much,” she gushed, taking hold of the tiny vial and clasping it to her bosom protectively. “Tell Alastair I won’t let him down. Tomorrow, I am going to give Dean the best birthday present it could ever possibly have. I will finally be able to show that poor Omegá the wonders of its own biology.”

~

 


	55. Chapter Fifty One

Happy Birthday, Dean told himself, as he stared at his distorted reflection in the window of his small hospital room. He was sixteen. The magic number that he and his mother had been working towards for so long, with such hope.

And now his mom was gone and so was his hope.

He swallowed, sniffled slightly and blinked his eyes rapidly, refusing to give in to the tears that were pressing behind his eyes. He couldn’t afford to show any weakness to the Betas.

Sam was all he had left in the world now and Sam needed him. Needed him to be strong.

Though that, like so much else in life, was far easier said than done.

He’d been stuck in the hospital room for two months, enough to make him want to climb the walls with frustration. There were only so many repeats of Dr Sexy he could watch on the wall mounted TV without going insane with boredom. The idea of spending a further indefinite amount of time in that same one room was unbearable.

But, then again, so was the idea of ever leaving it.

After all, he wasn’t being kept _locked_ in the room. He apparently was free to wander the entire floor, given that it was a secure wing but, even now that walking was physically possible for him again, he couldn’t face it. Sure, his physical therapy sessions had included several marches up and down the corridor to strengthen his legs after the enforced bedrest but it wasn’t an experience he was in any hurry to repeat voluntarily.

As the only Omegá in the hospital (in fact, possibly one of only two in the whole State to the best of his knowledge and the other one was living in Pack Land so didn’t really count) he was subject to far too much curiosity from the Betas. Even in the closed environment of the ward that his room was situated in, there were always several dozen strange Betas around to gawp and stare at him as he was paraded, virtually naked, in front of them.

He hated the Omegá clothes ‘Becky’ had provided. He’d have rather even worn a dress, despite the possibility of Sam’s mockery over the idea. At least the diaphanous Omegá gowns like Daniel wore offered some semblance of respectability. Sure they were made of sheer, practically transparent fabric that only leant an illusion of discrete cover over nakedness but that illusion was far better than the alternative. And they were also kind to his sensitive skin.

Omegá pants, as Becky had provided him with, were more like a bizarre cross between cowboy chaps and a suspender belt holding baggy stockings in place. Actually, the latter was definitely a better comparison in his opinion. The pants consisted of a wide waistband with dangling straps down to mid-thigh, from which loose pyjama-type silk leg coverings were suspended. So his ass and his mound were not only fully on naked display but the clothing seemed to deliberately draw the eye to that part of his anatomy even more than actual complete nakedness would. His shirt, made of the same flimsy fabric as the pant legs was open at the middle, with no buttons to enable it to be fastened closed and the bottom of it barely skimmed the top of his waistband.

He thought he probably looked like some pornographic illustration of a mythical genie.

According to Becky, he looked ‘cute’.

Still, he was fortunate she was only his psychologist not his medical doctor, since she’d several times mentioned the only thing that would make him look ‘cuter’ would be a docked mound. Apparently, his external genitals ruined the ‘line’ of his outfit.

“You’d look so much neater with a quick ‘snip’,” she’d wheedled. “And it’s not like the silly little things are of any use to you anyway.”

But despite his aura of supposed co-operation when listening to her drone on, endlessly, about how much happier he was going to be when he ‘embraced’ his designation, the subject of being docked inevitably caused him to completely forget he was supposed to co-operate with her at all. So, fortunately, she had dropped the conversational topic completely. Well, except for the number of times she’d stare at his ‘untidy’ front and sigh out loud before rolling her eyes in exasperation and moving on to the next thrilling topic for discussion.

He’d taken to sitting with his hands permanently clasped together in front of his mound to give himself a little illusion of privacy and distract her pouty glares from that direction.

Still, privacy was going to be the least of his concerns today.

Apparently, Becky’s idea of an appropriate birthday present was that today was the day he was finally going to be graduating from the theory of Omegá sexuality to practical lessons in how to satisfy his 'inner urges'.

She’d been totally dismissive when he’d reluctantly told her about the peg Bobby had crafted for him that he had used on a number of occasions (though never, admittedly, with the same effect as the first time). When, under duress, he’d accurately described its size and length, Becky had laughed aloud and advised him she wasn’t talking about teaching him to play with a ‘silly little toy’.

So he had a horrible suspicion that she was probably referring to something more like the monstrosity his Pops had wanted to shove inside him.

The thought was enough to make him nauseous. In fact, the only reason he wasn’t on his knees throwing up as the time for Becky’s appointment approached was the fact he’d already thrown up several times already that morning and he doubted there was even any bile left inside his stomach at this point.

It didn’t help his nerves that she arrived early, bouncing into his room with such bizarre enthusiasm that it took all of his will-power not to smack the smug look off her face as she announced, “Happy Birthday, Dean. I have the best present in the world for you today. I know you think you aren’t ready yet but, trust me, you are going to LOVE it. By the end of today’s session, you are going to wonder why on earth you’ve been making such a silly fuss over nothing.”

There was, Dean had discovered, never any point in trying to win an argument with the woman. No matter what he said, she’d just pretend to listen, nodding sympathetically in all the right places and then, when he finally ran out of breath, she’d just clap her hands and say, “I hear you, Dean. I understand your perception of things. Now you’ve got that nonsense off your chest, let’s get back to me explaining why that perception is completely wrong.”

“Ah, here’s Doctor Morgan,” she said as a heavyset beta entered the room with a couple of nurses in tow. “He’s going to give you a quick examination first, check you’re physically fine before we begin. Hop up on the bed, Dean. Chop, Chop,” she added impatiently when he hesitated.

Dean complied, knowing he had to be seen to be co-operative if there was going to be any chance of keeping Sam out of the academy, let alone he himself ever getting out of Becky Rosen hell.

Dr Morgan fiddled with the bottom of Dean’s bed and pulled up the stirrups that had been fitted there to make it easier for the doctors to examine the damage to his pelvis but Dean wasn’t under any illusion it was his pelvis that Morgan was interested in today. Sure enough, as soon as his knees and lower legs were suspended up and away from his body, the doctor moved the stirrups away from each other, opening his knees widely to expose his Flores.

“Any discomfort to your hips in this position?” the doctor asked.

“No,” Dean admitted reluctantly.

The doctor nodded and pressed the stirrups a little wider, then locked them in position. “I’ll just take a little initial look at you while they get the theatre ready and then we’ll roll you down there on a gurney and then I’ll get a chance to have a better look inside you.”

Dean jolted with panic, struggling to get his legs off the stirrups, and then rolling off the bed to land in a defensive crouch on the floor.  “No way,” he said. “You’re not doing that to me. You can’t operate on me without Sam agreeing and there’s no way in hell he would have agreed to THAT!”

The doctor blinked at him in astonishment, then turned to Becky with a frown.  “I thought you said he was starting to behave himself. I hardly want to deal with this kind of attitude in front of an audience.”

Becky frowned at Dean angrily, her hands on her hips, her mouth set in pouting frustration. Then, suddenly, her frown cleared abruptly and she giggled loudly, clapping her hands together in a childish expression of glee. “Oh, you silly, silly, thing, Dean.” She turned to Morgan with a smirk. “I’ve been trying to convince it to have its vestigial genitals removed to improve its appearance but it’s being quite ridiculously precious about keeping them. When you said ‘theatre’, I think Dean assumed we were going to go ahead and do the procedure anyway.”

Morgan chuckled. “I see. Well, although you’re not wrong, Dr Rosen, as a male I have to admit I have a certain amount of sympathy for Dean’s position on the subject.”

“But Dean _isn’t_ male and doesn’t need them anyway. I can’t see why it wouldn’t want its mound to look neater. It’s so… untidy down there.”

“Well, most Beta males don’t really need genitals either, at least not after their wives have popped out a pup or two, if we're  being completely frank here, Dr Rosen.  So, personally, I’m in Dean’s camp regarding his male genitals. I’m really not a supporter of unnecessary cosmetic procedures and even if it’s true that vestigial organs can develop cancerous growths, which I personally doubt, it’s easy enough to whip them off _after_ an issue develops. So, I say leave the pup’s mound alone.”

Startled by the unexpected support, Dean offered Morgan a hesitant smile. “So, um, what’s the operating theatre needed for then?” he asked cautiously.

“I wasn’t referring to an operating theatre,” Morgan explained patiently. “Dr Rosen is going to perform your therapy session in the hospital’s teaching theatre today. It’s an unprecedented opportunity for all the medical students and staff here to see Omegárean biology for themselves. In fact, a large number of visiting Doctors will be attending too, at the invitation of the hospital administration, and the ticket sales have offset more than the cost of your medical treatment here so whilst I don’t imagine you’re happy, if this is the first you’ve heard about it, at least be assured your Alpha Guardian isn’t going to be faced with a huge hospital bill when you finally get released.”

“I’m sure Sam is going to be grateful you are sparing him that financial burden,” Becky said, with a triumphant smirk. “And, of course, there will be a number of local government officials present so that’s an additional reason for you to behave yourself today, Dean. They’ll hardly accept any recommendation by me to allow you to take guardianship of your brother if they witness you behaving badly with their own eyes.”

“I’m sure the pup is fully aware of the consequences of misbehaving,” Morgan said, frowning at Becky. “He’s understandably nervous about the session and I’m not sure threatening him is going to help him relax. Maybe if you’d told him earlier about the audience, he would have had time to settle to the idea.”

Becky pouted a little at the chastisement but soon brightened as her irrepressible self-confidence reasserted itself, “I didn’t mean it as a threat,” she lied. “Just a reminder of how important it is that itbehaves itself.  Besides, it’s going to be a wonderful experience so there’s no point in it being all silly and nervous.”

Dean was pretty certain that one of these days if the bitch didn’t keep calling him ‘silly’ he was going to have the’ truly wonderful’ experience of slapping the smirk off her face. Still, neither she nor Doctor Morgan were wrong. He _was_ going to have to ‘behave’ himself, whether he liked it or not. Particularly now he knew about the hospital bill. He hadn’t even considered _that_ aspect of his extended stay before. He guessed that even if he _had,_ he would have assumed it would be covered by the local government. But, then again, why wouldn’t they use it as yet another way of controlling his behaviour?

Doctor Morgan, who at least was calling Dean a ‘he’ rather than Becky’s intensely irritating habit of insisting that ‘it’ was the correct pronoun for an Omegá, was also being surprisingly a lot more understanding of Dean’s trepidation than the irritating psychologist and took the time to explain what was going to happen.

“Obviously, Dr Rosen is intending to perform the first insertion of a real peg inside you today. It will be a size or two larger than the one you will wear regularly. We usually use a size three for a first penetration, that’s the size that’s issued by the Department of Public Health for emergency kits. Most pegged seating is only size one, for convenience, so ensuring a flores easily opens to a size three is generally adequate for ongoing purposes. But because of your unusual situation, Dr Rosen is suggesting a size three or four for daily insertion and that means we might need to open you to a five or six today and my role is to physically examine you to ensure it is safe and appropriate to do so. I’ll be performing a largely non-invasive examination of your vagina and womb passage to ensure no harm is caused by today’s exercise.”

“I don’t understand,” Dean said. “What’s with the different sizes and what’s my ‘unusual situation’?”

“Really?” Morgan scoffed, glaring at Becky. “You haven’t explained _anything_ to him?”

“I didn’t think it was relevant yet,” she said, defensively. “It’s not as though he’ll be leaving the hospital for at least another fortnight.”

Morgan sighed and shook his head before returning his attention to Dean. “The problem is that your Familial Alpha is still a school-age pup,” he explained. “As are you, really, though everyone is conveniently forgetting that when it suits them. Anyway, that means you’ll be accompanying him to school and since Omegá seating must be provided in every place you are likely to need to sit down, the High School is facing a financial and logistical issue of needing to install a separate Omegá seat in every single classroom and homeroom and canteen and, well, you get the point, I’m sure. Nobody wants to make that kind of financial investment in accommodating an Omegá when the likelihood is there will never be another Omegá in the school after you anyway.

“So the school board have negotiated with the local government and its been decided it’s perfectly legal, and makes more sense, for you to simply wear a peg internally so that every seat, effectively, becomes pegged seating if you sit on it. It also makes a lot more logistic sense as it’s a lot easier for an Omegá to sit down on a peg than it is for them to get back up again. Your body won’t release the peg until it’s ready to do so. Release can’t be forced, so in practical application the idea of you swapping seats every period just isn’t going to fly.”

“So I walk around with a peg permanently inside me, instead of sitting down on one?” Dean asked, not finding an issue with the idea. The embarrassing thought of being forced to visibly seat himself on a peg in full view of his classmates had been one of his primary fears.

“Yes,” Morgan agreed. “And so the only question becomes what size is a suitable peg for that purpose since it will have to be designed especially so that you can sit and walk comfortably but still find it suitable for purpose. It will need to be carefully shaped so that simply the act of sitting down on it is enough to ensure it offers the same reaction as a fixed peg if the schoolboard is going to comply with the Law.”

“We’re going to be late,” Becky reminded him impatiently. “I can explain more to Dean later.”

Dr Morgan sighed but nodded his agreement, then asked one of the nurses to fetch the gurney.

At least it meant Dean was able to travel to the hospital theatre with the protection of a blanket to provide him with a little modesty. Not that it should make much difference, he thought to himself, considering he was about to be displayed in public anyway but, even so, it was far less traumatic than having to walk through the hospital corridors on general display.

And he kept his eyes averted from the seating areas as he was wheeled onto the stage and slid from the gurney onto a form of gynaecological couch with fixed stirrups, not wanting to see exactly how many people were gathered to watch his humiliation.

He didn’t even turn his head to look when he heard the whispers and murmurs of multitudinous voices as the nurses expertly fitted his feet into the stirrups and placed him in the same position he had been in earlier with his knees wide apart and his Flores fully revealed. Dean didn’t know if the audience consisted of dozens of people or even hundreds. He didn’t want to know. His face burning hot, his eyes averted from the crowd, he just repeated to himself, over and over, do this for Sam.

Don’t struggle. Don’t fight. Don’t argue. Just let this happen. For Sammy.

A hospital administrator stepped out onto the stage, ignoring Dean completely and simply addressing the gathered audience. "Before we begin, let me remind you all that you are here by special invitation to witness a private therapy session. The use of any recording devices is strictly prohibited and would be an illegal act, breaching this patient's right to privacy."

Dr Morgan stepped between Dean’s thighs.  “Let’s take a look at you, whilst Dr Rosen gets herself set up,” he said, popping an examination glove onto his right hand and then gently running the tips of his fingers over Dean’s Flores. “Perfect,” he said, and although his voice was gentle, microphones picked it up and transmitted it loud and clear for the listening audience.  “Let’s just take a little look inside your vagina. Sorry. This might be a little cold.” He pulled out a short, thin bullet-like metal probe on a wire and pushed it rudely between the lips of Dean’s Flores, burying its full length with a swift stabbing action.

Dean squeaked in shock, his entire body shuddering in reaction to the sudden intrusion.  The doctor looked over his shoulders to the nurses. “Best strap his legs. I don’t want him accidentally hurting himself.”

Before Dean could even think of reacting, the nurses grabbed an ankle each and buckled straps around them, fastening him to the stirrups so he was unable to do more in his awkward position than wave his arms or raise his head. “There,” the doctor said, as he now started to press harder against the flesh of Dean’s Flores, poking and prodding the skin until it started to flush with blood. “His initial responses seem fine.”

Dr Morgan then turned his attention to Becky. “Let’s get the cameras in place before we proceed. I want everyone to be able to see what we’re doing. And it will be instructive for Dean to see his own body’s reactions.” Then he frowned a little. “It’s usual to gag the Omegá at this point. Makes them more pliable.”

Becky smiled and produced a small ball gag which she easily popped into place with a quick, mean squeezing of Dean's nostrils until he had no choice except to open his mouth to gasp for breath. She quickly and expertly fastened the gag in place, ignoring Dean's muffled protests.

"That's not what I meant," Morgan frowned. "If you use a phallic gag, it will make him pliant and more receptive to penetration."

“Oh, I’m confident we won’t need to use one of those," Becky replied. “It's just a bit scared at the moment. It'll be perfectly fine once we get started. I just don't want to listen to it blubbering and whining in the meantime. That gets so boring, doesn't it?"

Dr Morgan frowned at her repressively but refrained from saying anything to criticise her attitude in front of the gathered audience. "Let’s check he’s internally fine,” the doctor said, instead.  “I'll just turn on the probe's camera and we'll get a good look inside him."

Above the stage, three large projection screens came to life, portraying just dark shadows with a small blinking light in the centre. “That’s the opening of your vagina,” the doctor told Dean conversationally. “It seems clear. No obstructions.” He clicked a button and Dean yelped with shock as a jolt went through his groin, On the screens, the light began to move rapidly. “That was a little surge of electricity so that your body recognised the invader. It’s reacted naturally, dragging the probe inside. It should be pulled right into your womb cavity. Yes, there it is, let me just increase the light. Perfect. If anything it’s more generously proportioned than normal. You’re definitely built to take a full sized Primá cock, Dean.” The doctor turned to Becky. “I can’t see the point of messing about with the smaller size pegs. You were right. He’s definitely got the internal capacity for the largest size as long as we can open him up wide enough to insert it.”

“I was expecting you to say that, given how big Dean is physically," Becky beamed, “though external size isn’t always infallible proof of internal capacity. But putting an undersize peg in it is pretty pointless. If it doesn’t fill it properly, it won’t have half as much effect. I'm determined that today is a really good experience for Dean. I've spent weeks telling it that it's perfectly natural for Omegáres to crave penetration but today is about letting it discover for itself that I'm right."

‘Well, I’d definitely recommend a size six peg,” Doctor Morgan agreed, pulling at the wire to retrieve the probe. “You might as well do the job right if you’re going to do it at all, but that requires a four inch dilation of his flores just to get the crown of the peg in place. I think you should reconsider using a proper Omegá gag and give him a thorough spanking too. I can do that for you if you like."

“Oh, I think Dean is going to be fine,” Becky purred. “I think it's going to take one look at that peg and want it so much it'll just open up like a flower in sunlight. Let’s switch the view to the external cameras, so it can see the reaction for itself.’

Dean cringed with mortification as the image on the screens switched to a direct view of his own swollen flores. It was flushed a bright pink and was slightly open where the probe had emerged and clear, shiny slick was trickling from the tiny breach, dribbling down the crease line of his flores towards his ass.

As he lay there, cheeks burning with humiliation, with his most private place displayed in its glory on three huge screens to the gathered audience, Dean might have imagined it couldn’t get any worse but Becky decided to take that moment to start talking at length to the audience about her theories regarding Omegáres and through the whole tiresome process, Dean’s gaze remained transfixed on the huge screens displaying his flores and he couldn’t help cringing with mortification that, undoubtedly, the audience were all equally fascinated by the sight.

Then, adding insult to injury, Becky invited several of the visiting doctors to come up on the stage for a closer, more personal examination of _her_ Omegá.

One at a time, the doctors ran their gloved hands over Dean’s flores, pinching and tapping the flesh until it was almost scarlet and was now visibly pulsing between his legs, its throbbing excitement at the impersonal touches blown up in technicolor for the audience, and slick was literally starting to flow now out of the slight breach in his flores and drip down onto the floor beneath him.

“The Flores is obviously unique to Omegáres,” Becky said, “and as you can all see, just the act of touching it is causing the subject to become considerably aroused. I’m sure you can all see it’s already beginning to open in expectation of penetration and the mucus you can see beginning to run quite freely from the opening is generally called ‘slick’. It has a sweet, pungent aroma not unlike honey. The smell will grow in intensity as Dean becomes more sexually excited and long before this session is over, I expect this whole theatre to be flooded with his perfume. It’s our understanding that the production of slick is not simply a way of lubricating his passage, though it works extremely well for that purpose, allowing the insertion of an aroused Primárean penis which, even without a knot, is several inches in diameter. The slick is also, however, a direct invitation for that penetration. As soon as it begins to be produced, it is a clear sign that the Omegá is ready… nay, actually _begging_ to be mounted.”

“Do you want to take over, Dr Jamel?” Dr Morgan asked one of the visiting doctors. “I understand you're far more experienced in this than I am.”

“Of course,” Jamel agreed happily. “I spent a while in Kansas City when they had two rut houses, so I'm familiar with handling Omegáres. I know you've already done an internal examination. What number peg did you say you’re recommending?"

“Even though it's unusual to apply anything other than a number three for an initial penetration, I believe a six is far more appropriate for Dean’s internal capacity as long as we can get it inside in the first place. Dr Rosen doesn’t want to apply external duress unless it proves absolutely necessary.”

Jamel frowned but shrugged his agreement. “Hand me the peg, then,” he instructed.

It was Becky who stepped forward with a huge box. She grinned at Dean. “I promise you are going to LOVE this, Dean. Try not to be scared.” She opened the box and Jamel withdrew a black moulded rubber peg so large that he needed both hands to heft it. It was so huge it dwarfed the wooden monstrosity Samuel Campbell had intended to use. At its narrowest point it was fully four inches wide but then, it widened still further along its thickly ridged length to nearer six inches in diameter.

Dean began to thrash in panic, desperately trying to rise off the bed, completely forgetting any idea of co-operation. No-one could possibly survive something that vast being rammed inside them. He began to scream at them, begging and pleading for them to stop, though around the ball gag his words emerged merely as muffled, incoherent moans.

Jamel gave Becky a dubious look but lined up the tip of the huge peg so that it was positioned to enter Dean.

"Don't attempt to insert it yet. Just move it until you touch the very tip lightly against its Flores," Becky suggested. "Just do it as soft as a kiss. I am absolutely confident that all Dean needs is a little encouragement and it will naturally embrace the idea of being sexually satisfied. My instincts tell me that after spending so long, almost two whole years, in enforced celibacy since its presentation it's probably absolutely gagging for, well, to be honest, a damned good fuck."

All the gathered audience giggled at her deliberate crudity.

The tip of the heavy moulded rubber peg tapped Dean’s flores and he opened his mouth to roar around the gag in panicked terror but the very instant the rubber touched his flesh a jolt, not unlike the earlier charge of electricity, seemed to surge throughout his whole body. He gasped with confusion as his entire body began to tingle and vibrate, almost as though every cell in his body was somehow altering, as though every literal atom was starting to vibrate at a different speed and direction from normal. The blood seemed to whoosh out of his extremities towards his groin, leaving him limp and light-headed. He could actually feel the blood pooling in his flores, feel it starting to vibrate to the new strange rhythm pulsing through his blood.

On the overhead screens, he could see his flores expanding, growing, as newly blood-fat labial petals pushed outwards in waves, transforming a tightly closed sphincter into a multi-layered, double-petalled pulsing flower. And all the audience were gasping and exclaiming in shock at the swift visual transformation of Dean’s flores into a distinct, alien organ that seemed to pulse with its own life and intent.

‘OH MY GOD, LOOK AT THAT,’ someone gasped as, suddenly, the flores appeared to burst open, a small dark centre rapidly expanding until it was literally several inches wide and there was a huge gaping hole in the middle of Dean’s body, a huge empty cavern that pulsed hungrily, its dark depths filling with slick so that the whole theatre was abruptly enveloped with the sweet, pungent smell of honey.

And inside the hole was so shockingly cold, its wide opening exposing Dean’s inner passage so that the chill air of the room seemed to plunge inside him and he shuddered and gasped and sobbed as a weird sensation, not unlike hunger, began to build somewhere beneath his stomach in the cavernous depths of his insides in a throbbing, terrible ravenous ache. He needed the hole to close, needed the gaping maw to stop sucking in chilled air into his womb, someone needed to stop this rising crescendo of sensation before it ripped him apart with its terrible intensity.

Waves of tingling shocks seemed to thrum from his groin, running in a series of seismic waves into his extremities, causing his arms and legs to shudder and tremble, his fingers spasming as though actual electrical currents were being somehow generated in his womb and were surging through his whole body.

‘Please’ he begged, an incoherent mumble behind the gag. "Please, please, please.’ and he didn’t even know what he was asking for, just that he needed, somehow, for the gnawing ache to stop before his body shook apart.

"He's ready,’ Jamel said, his tone slightly shocked. "Looks like you were right, Dr Rosen. I've never seen such an instantaneous reaction before. But, then again, it's probably unprecedented for an Omegá to still be a virgin at this age."

Becky just nodded weakly. Although she'd expected the pheromones to have an effect as soon as they touched Dean's skin, she hadn't been prepared for such a violent response. Maybe Jamel was right. Maybe it _was_ just the result of Dean having built up years of sexual yearning that had suddenly been released like a valve opening to release a build-up of too much pressure.

Lifting the peg and sliding the tip, easily, into the now cavernous hole. Dr Jamel barely got a couple of inches inserted before the Flores snatched at the peg and began dragging it inside, inch by inch, Dean’s internal muscles sucking at its intense weight, struggling against its mass, pulling so inexorably that Dean could only howl in shock as over two feet of its length was swallowed inside him and the stretch on his flores was almost agonising as it was forced open wider and wider by the increasing girth until he was fully impaled by a peg almost as wide as his own lower thigh.

Jamel stepped back, wiping his slick-covered hands on a towel, “Now, watch,” he advised the watching audience. “Now the peg is inside him, there’s nothing for us to do medically except keep an eye on his heart rate. He’ll do all the rest himself.’

‘Don’t you have to fuck him with it?” someone called out.

“Omegáres only need to be penetrated. Once they have a peg inserted, they generate all the stimulation they need internally. If this was a Primá’s knot, the poor bastard would be looking at being trapped inside the Omegá for an hour or more whilst the Omegá tries to force a knot out of him. Of course, if that works, the Primá then gets trapped for another hour or so until his cock reduces enough to withdraw, always assuming the Omegá is prepared to release him. Sometimes the mating between an Omegá and a Primá can literally take more than a day, if the Omegá is a particularly greedy cock-slut.

“Because this is Dean’s first real penetration, he’ll probably work that peg for several hours before he’s exhausted enough to release it,’ Dr Jamel, replied, then politely stepped back to allow Becky to take over the lecture once more.

“You can all see how the peg is starting to move inside the subject. The Omegá is working the peg, using its internal muscles to squeeze and massage the invading object, attempting to force it to form a knot and ejaculate.  It’s an instinctive response. Clearly the Omegá was aware that the peg is only a fake penis but it will still respond to the penetration in exactly the same way as it would to a real penis. Omegáres also react the same way to anal penetration by Alphas. Since neither a Peg or an anal penetration are capable of impregnating it, it’s a fallacy to say Omegárean responses are based on their desire to conceive. An Omegá reacts this way for one reason and one reason only.  They are absolutely driven by the desire to achieve personal orgasm.

“You can all see for yourselves that an Omegá is capable of multiple orgasms. In just the last few minutes, the subject has already driven itself into an orgasmic frenzy twice and it will most probably refuse to release the peg out of itself until it has wrested several dozen more.”

"Dr Rosen," Morgan said, discretely trying to catch her attention. When he failed, he rolled his eyes in irritation then moved over to Dean and quickly unfastened his gag from between lips that were turning blue.

Dean took a gulping gasp of breath, then arched and bucked as his body convulsed with another orgasm.

"Oops," Becky said, as she paused talking long enough to notice what was happening. "I quite forgot to do that. Thank you, Dr Morgan." She turned her attention back to the audience, offering them a winning smile. "It's important to remove anything obstructing the Omegá's airflow at this stage because an Omegá's lung capacity is considerably reduced during penetration. One of the unique aspects of Omegáren biology is that their internal organs are fluid. They have a natural ability to temporarily relocate to a new location when necessary and an Omegá's lungs deflate and their diaphragm retracts.  That creates sufficient capacity inside them to accept a Primá's knot but has the side effect of reducing their ability to process oxygen efficiently. Between the redirection of their blood flow to their reproductive organs and the reduction in oxygen, a rutting Omegá is rarely capable of true sentient thought during copulation. They truly are reduced to mere physical reactions. It is highly unlikely that Dean has been truly aware of any external events since the moment the peg was inserted."

She beamed at the audience, clearly so enthralled by being centre stage that she paid barely any attention whatsoever to the Omegá writhing on the bed behind her. "Let me tell you all about the Omegáren ragdoll response..."

Neither did she notice the Beta on the front row who ceased his discrete recording of the 'therapy session', typed out a text, attached the media file and sent the message.

Moments later, in the Pack house in Detroit, Megan Cainson's phone chimed receipt of an incoming text.


	56. Chapter Fifty Two

Crowley growled, low in his throat, his expression thunderous as he watched the video clip. "Fucking stupid, cunting, bitch-whore," he snarled, as he reached the point at which the Omegá might have literally asphyxiated if not for the doctor, Morgan, who'd actually been paying attention. When the clip abruptly ended, he took a deep breath to steady his temper before returning his attention to Castiel's wife.

"Well?" she demanded, bouncing on her seat, her whole body trembling with repressed fury. "What are we going to do about it? I’m not waiting for CP to get back from the Confederacy to do something about this shit. I want something done today!”

"To be honest, cupcake, there isn't a lot we _can_ do," he advised her reluctantly, his eyes burning like embers. "The fuckers didn't break any actual _laws_. The only possible charge we could bring would be against Rosen for Omegá neglect in respect of her failure to remove the gag in good time and, since her colleague interfered before any actual harm was caused, the law wouldn't even offer any redress worthy of the consequences of our interference. We'd be looking at a minor flogging at best and, given that she's the daughter of David Rosen, the political repercussions of that wouldn't be worth the satisfaction of insisting on it being done."

"Gaggghhh," Meg spat. "I don't want the stupid cow 'flogged'. I want her impaled on a pyramid in the middle of the dining hall, and then I want to throw a three-day party for the entire pack so we can all celebrate her slow and agonising descent into the hell she deserves. Goddamned hell-bitch CUNT!"

Crowley smirked at the image, his eyes flashing a brighter scarlet. "If it's any consolation, someone like her will inevitably cross the line into blatant illegality. Her unbelievable ego guarantees it. So get a pyramid ready with her name on because you _will_ get your chance sooner or later. But, sadly, not today."

"Pah," Meg spat. "I kind of knew you were going to say that but my blood is boiling, Crowley. I just want to drop a bomb on the whole fucking City of Sioux Falls. I actually wish she had gone a bit further, just so I could bring the wrath of the Omadonna down on her head but, at the same time, I'm so fucking relieved the poor bastard hasn't actually been hurt yet."

"It's pretty unusual these days to see a Free-Beta born Omegá who is still an undocked virgin at sixteen," Crowley agreed.

"I guess he still _is_ a virgin," Meg said, thoughtfully. "As fucked up as this was, being raped by a peg isn't the same as being penetrated by an Alpha. As far as a Primá would be concerned, this Omegá, Dean, is still untouched."

Crowley nodded his agreement. "It doesn't matter to a Primá how many Betas put their hands on him or whether he spends the next two years having his holes constantly plugged with pegs, unless an actual Alpha cock breaches him, he's still going to be considered a completely virgin bride. Which probably makes him the most valuable Omegá in America at the moment."

"So we need to get him out of that hellhole and into a Pack immediately," Meg insisted.

Crowley shrugged. "I'll get the situation investigated. Throwing enough money at a problem usually works. Dependent on who considers they 'own', Dean, it might be possible to buy him before anything else happens to him. But I doubt anyone is going to risk facing the consequences of taking a sixteen-year-old pup over the border without a considerable cash incentive. Still, whatever he costs to buy, I'm sure we could recoup the investment from whichever Primá he eventually chooses. We just have to hope Dean doesn't end up falling for some impoverished Primá hick from the Southern States or we'll end up considerably out of pocket. I can't see us pulling this off for less than $10m."

“To be honest,” Meg said, “I’m hoping he might be CP’s ‘unicorn’, in which case I don’t care if he costs us ten times that much.”

Crowley startled, then brayed with laughter. “Sorry,” he gasped, when she glared at him furiously. “But I can’t see it.  He might be pretty as a picture facially, but he’s as big as a horse, Meg. He’s got more muscles than Benny. Virgin or not, I can’t see Castiel finding him any more attractive than he’d find Benny dressed in drag!”

Meg snorted with amusement at _that_ mental picture but still shook her head firmly. “I think the Omegá is stunning,” she argued. “Being different isn’t a bad thing and, honestly, he really does have the most beautiful face and he’s only sixteen. I imagine, given his bone structure, he’s just going to keep getting even better looking as he ages.”

“Not to mention bigger,” Crowley pointed out. “I’d guess he’s already nearly six foot and I expect he’s still got a couple of inches of growth in him and he already looks like a huge hulking Alpha. If he ever dressed like Chuck, no-one would ever guess he’s an Omegá at all.”

“That’s a horrible thing to say,” Meg snapped. “That’s like me saying you are such a short-ass that nobody would guess you were an Alpha if you didn’t keep swinging your dick around in people’s faces.”

“And if you _did_ say it, it would, sadly, be true,” Crowley admitted. “I’m not being a bigot, Meg, nor a hypocrite. I’m not mocking the Omegá for his size, nor suggesting he isn’t going to make _some_ Primá ecstatically happy.  I just don’t believe it will be Castiel.  You’re so desperate to find him a perfect, virginal bride that you’re missing the obvious.  Castiel likes ‘em small and dark and pretty and delicate, like Joshua and, forgive me, yourself.  When have you ever seen Castiel look twice at anyone of _any_ designation that wasn’t as petite as yourself? He might be prepared to do his duty and fuck his first Alphas but he certainly wouldn’t want to _marry_ any of us.”

“Shit,” Meg sighed. “What’s the fucking odds, huh? We finally find an actual real-life American Omegá virgin and he still isn’t what CP is looking for? At this rate I’ll never get any pups to raise.”

Crowley wrinkled his nose thoughtfully.  “Do I still have authority from you to buy him from Pack funds?”

“Of course,” Meg stated. “I don’t care whether _any_ Primá wants him. I want him out of the hands of that evil little egotistical cow and into a safe place as soon as possible. And I want you to get someone into Sioux Falls General and get some evidence against her. Whatever else happens, that bitch is going to pay, Crowley.”

~~

“Okay, I’ve been looking into the Omegá and you’re not going to like my conclusions,” Crowley told her, when they reconvened the next morning.

“Hit me with it,” she said.

“His legally accepted Familial Alpha is his fifteen-year-old brother. Even if the pup _wanted_ to sell his older brother to us, and that’s going to be pretty damned unlikely under the circumstances, he couldn’t do so legally for another three years anyway.”

“Hang on a minute,” Meg protested. “How can an Omegá possibly have an Alpha brother?”

“Well the whole situation is so fucked up it might as well be a day-time soap opera.  The mother, a Mary Winchester, got herself knocked up with Dean and married the man she _claimed_ was the sire. But that man, John Winchester, was an Alpha.  Then Mary apparently had a second son, Sam, but he’s grown up to be an Alpha. So John couldn’t have been _his_ Sire either and, come to think of it, either Dean or Sam aren’t actually _Mary’s_ pups since the same beta womb couldn’t produce one of _each_ designation.  But wait, it gets better…

“Dean presented and John fucked off, realising he wasn’t the pup’s Sire.  Then _Mary’s_ Sire discovered Dean was an Omegá and _he_ was apparently a minister of the Church of Abel and went crazy about his grandpup being an Omegá and Mary killed him, in what the Betas are calling murder but it definitely looks like she killed him in defence of Dean to me, and she then ran away with the two pups.”

“Shit,” Meg exclaimed. “Ballsy babe! Good on her!”

“So then Mary shacked up with yet another Alpha, seemed she had a type, and then Sam presented as an Alpha and John turned up out of nowhere and attacked Sam and killed Mary, and then the two adult Alphas killed each other in an assumed argument over ownership of the Omegá, and Dean got hurt during their fight and that’s how he ended up in the hospital under Becky Rosen’s care.

“Now, at this point, it’s pretty clear that Sam, the alpha pup, can’t possibly be related to Dean at all but he’s still ‘legally’ Dean’s brother and has successfully applied for and been granted the status of being Dean’s Familial Alpha. He’s also a teen alpha who is already showing the first stages of rut rage and the Beta courts, in their wisdom, have still decided to give him ‘ownership’ of an Omegá. I think we’d have a snowball’s chance in hell of convincing him to give Dean up even if it was legally possible for him to do so.  Anyway, it’s highly likely, under the circumstances, that within an hour of Dean getting released from the hospital he’s going to be bent over with his _brother’s_ cock buried inside his ass. So it’s probably just as well he _isn’t_ Castiel’s ‘unicorn’.”

“We can’t let that happen, Crowley. We need to save him,” Meg demanded.

“Legally, our hands are tied, Meg, until they break a law we can act on and, by then, it’ll be too late anyway.”

“Then fuck the law,” Meg snarled. “What’s the worst that can happen if we react and grab Dean anyway?”

“Um… another war?” Crowley suggested. “Don’t you think Castiel already has enough problems on his hands in Maryland already?”

“Hah, that’s just proven how toothless the Beta Government really are.  The only reason CP isn’t home yet is he’s actually demanding reparation to the Maryland State for damages, hurt feelings and the care and upkeep of their ‘prisoners of war’ and it actually looks like they’re going to fold and pay up.”

Crowley barked with laughter. “Serves them right,” he said.

The President, feeling increasingly irritated at living on the actual border of the newly declared North Eastern Confederacy had decided to attempt to take back Maryland under force.  What he hadn’t considered, when sending in his troops, was that the majority of his best military ground force assets were Alphas.

Within two days of the initial incursion, every single one of his Alpha soldiers had defected to the other side and the Betas had been forced to withdraw their remaining troops to lick their wounded pride on the Union side of the border.

Then the Presidential lawyers had attempted to enforce the return of the defectors, insisting the Confederacy were legally obliged to repatriate them.  The Confederacy had argued that the ‘defectors’ were actually prisoners of war and the fact they were walking around freely in Confederate lands was irrelevant as the Union had no right to criticise how they chose to handle their internal politics.

Now Castiel was pushing the boat further and insisting that the Beta Government paid compensation for the entire ‘misunderstanding’ and it appeared he was going to win.

The last thing Meg wanted to do was cause him more problems when he was handling such delicate negotiations but Crowley was right, she could hardly authorise the kidnapping of a teen Omegá without discussing the issue with him first but it wasn’t a conversation she dared to have over an electronic device and he wasn’t due home for several more days.

“Do we have any idea when the hospital is planning to release Dean?” she asked.

“It seems Dr Rosen intends to keep him for at least another ten days so she can ‘fully awaken his Omegáren biology’ and then, apparently, she wants to ‘train’ Sam on the ‘appropriate’ way to spank his buttocks before she signs the release papers,” Crowley growled. “But at least that keeps Dean safe from the risk of actually being mounted for another couple of weeks. Never thought I’d actually feel grateful for him being in the hands of the insane bitch.”

“Wide,” Meg snarled. “Really wide.”

“Huh?”

“I’m imagining a new, very _special_ kind of pyramid. One with a really wide base so its acute angle is _far_ less dramatic. I’m thinking we could keep her alive for _weeks_ if the descent was that gradual. And maybe hooks hanging from the ceiling attached to her nipples so when she finally drops low enough, they rip her tits right off her body.”

“Whoah,” Crowley said, rather impressed by her blood-thirsty imagination.

“Let’s put a plan together to extract him so that we can run it past CP as soon as he gets home.”

~

In the event, Castiel didn’t return to Detroit for a full further week so by the time he arrived home, tired from ten days of awkward negotiations with obnoxious Beta Lawyers and Government representatives, he was too tired to pay more than a cursory amount of attention when Crowley mentioned the Omegá during his debrief of what he’d missed during his absence.

His interest _had_ momentarily been piqued by the unexpected fact the Omegá was still a virgin but had just as quickly been quenched by Crowley’s pronouncement that it was some kind of bizarre giant mutant that looked more like _Benny_ than an Omegá.  That isn’t to say Castiel lost any sympathy for the Omegá, he just had little or no interest in handling the issue personally.  Having just spent so much time wiping up Raphael’s mess in Maryland, Castiel felt that this was something that should be handled on a local level by Ophriel and he told Crowley as much, with not a little temper.

He didn’t show the same level of disrespect to his wife, though, so although by then he was completely exhausted, he listened to her recital of the events that had occurred in Sioux Falls and rather than having to pretend interest, as the details emerged from Meg’s lips, his primary struggle was to suppress his temper.

“Do you want to watch the film?” Meg asked cautiously, as her husband’s eyes flared with blue fire.

Castiel shook his head. “I think I’d go insane if I watched it,” he confessed. “I trust you and I also know that if there was a legal redress then Crowley would already have found it.”

“Ophriel and Daniel have agreed to help,” she assured him. “Nobody can physically stop Daniel from taking Dean out of the hospital and Ophriel is perfectly happy to take the heat from the local government.  He’s going to claim that Daniel was feeling broody and simply couldn’t resist taking the pup home with him.  Ophriel will play it off as the impulsive act of a barren Omegá suddenly faced with a needy orphaned pup.

“Daniel will escort Dean to the airport, where our plane will be waiting and the minute he’s on board, Dean will be protected by your diplomatic immunity. 

“The only obvious problem is that the Betas will obviously demand his immediate return to Beta Land and the only way we can prevent that turning into a full scale declaration of war is if we get a mating bite onto Dean’s mound almost immediately.  Once he’s bonded to a Primá he will be literally worthless to anyone else, so the government should be satisfied to accept a financial settlement in recompense for the situation. As long as we pay them more money than they could have reasonably expected to ‘earn’ from him anyway, especially now almost all of the rut houses have closed, I hope they won’t even see a downside.”

“It’ll probably cost us nearer $20m than ten,” Castiel pointed out. “I’ve just given them such a bloody nose over Maryland that they’ll take the opportunity to screw us as hard as possible to get some of that money back.”

“Is that okay?” Meg asked.

“Of course. I don’t care _what_ it costs. This is an Omegá we’re saving. Money isn’t even a consideration in a situation like this. And, who knows, if we’re generous enough financially, the government might even be tempted to simply offer us future Omegáres without all the dog and pony show in the hope we’ll pay as much for _every_ Omegá. Which, of course, we would if we could ensure no more ‘Claires’.”

“How is she?”

“Mother said she’s doing well. There’s been no adverse health repercussions over the severing of the mating bond and now that she’s barren her sexual urges have almost faded completely. What’s left is just learned habitual behaviour rather than physical absolute imperatives.  Learning to care for the pup is really helping to settle her, apparently. We might even be able to go visit him soon. Claire is incredibly protective and still won’t let him out of her sight but she’s getting better about letting other people come near him now.”

“It must really hurt, knowing you have a son and not being able to see him,” Meg acknowledged sympathetically.

Castiel smiled sadly. “It does, but Claire needs to be a mother _far_ more than I need to be a Sire. I can’t afford to be selfish about it when it would be so harmful to Claire to lose him. Mother has promised me he'll ensure he’s raised knowing he has a Sire who loves him and will always be there for him, even if Alexiel needs to be raised by his mother for at least the foreseeable future. Anyway, we were talking about the new Omegá, Dean.  Crowley seems to think there might be an issue with finding him an appropriate Primá. I hope we aren’t looking at another Claire situation.”

Meg laughed. “Crowley is being mean. Dean is absolutely gorgeous _and_ still a virgin. He’s just a little more generously sized than average. I’m sure there are tons of Primáres who’d like to have a statuesque bride.”

“With lots of muscles,” Castiel added. “Crowley said this Dean would give Benny a run for his money. I can’t wait to meet him. I’m rather intrigued.”

“Why don’t you watch the video then?”

Castiel shuddered. “Because I know it would drive me into a primal rage and I don’t know what I’d do with that much anger if I can’t legally call another conclave to address it,” he confessed.

“I see your point,” Meg agreed. “Though I won’t bother with a conclave when I eventually get my hands on Dr Rosen. I’ll handle it as an in-house trial and be done with it.”

“Well, go ahead and give Daniel the okay. I’ll authorise Crowley to release whatever compensation the Betas demand and we’ll put calls in to all the unmated Primáres and tell them to get ready to fly in as soon as Dean agrees he wants to meet with them.  I hate that he’ll be in a position of having to make a choice so abruptly but we can, at least, give him a number of options to pick from.”

“And are _you_ going to be one of the options?” she asked, slyly.

Castiel flushed. “I don’t expect so,” he admitted quietly. “If I were willing to settle for _any_ Omegá I would have let Claire keep my mating bond. I have this picture in my head of what _my_ Omegá will look like, and I know it’s just a childish fantasy and I will have to adapt my expectations somewhat when I _do_ finally meet him but I can tell you one thing for sure, Meg, and I don’t mean this with any disrespect for my Primary First Alpha, but my bride isn’t going to look like Benny!”

 


	57. Chapter Fifty Three

Becky Rosen had long since given up pretending her fascination with Omegáren psychology was in regard to anything except an Omegá's sexuality. Although she herself had a rather typically Betaesque personal aversion to the idea of sex in regards to her own body, she had a particularly unhealthy obsession in encouraging its practical application to Dean's.

After the first part of her 'therapy' session had been completed, and Becky had been flushed with the thrill of the successful presentation of her lecture to all the gathered alumni, she decided to move the process up a gear entirely.

It had taken almost three hours before Dean's Flores, replete, slowly began to release around the peg, its slackening grip allowing the final muscular spasms of his inner passage to begin pushing the peg back out of his vagina, ridge by ridge. By the time that twelve inches of the black rubber peg had re-emerged, Dean's diaphragm had relaxed, allowing his lungs to fully inflate and, with the increased flow of oxygen to his brain, he gradually became aware of his surroundings once more.

He ached all over, the tendons in his legs and arms stretched and pulled almost past endurance by hours of constant writhing, bucking and orgasmic spasms. The peg, finally shaken loose, dropped onto the floor in a last flow of slick and he sobbed slightly at the awful hollow emptiness that was left in its wake.

It was almost four further hours, however, before he was returned to his hospital room because Becky moved from a lecture to an open question and answer session with the audience and then, because the ticket price of the lecture had included refreshments, a vast buffet table had been set up on the edge of the stage and the audience had been allowed to move freely around the stage, taking it in turns to examine him more closely, drinks and snacks clutched in their hands as they gathered in small groups around Dean to discuss their reactions to being in such close proximity to a real-life Omegá 'slut'.

It would, admittedly, have been far worse If Dr Morgan hadn't remained at Dean's side, protecting him from actual physical contact, and politely but firmly denying the many requests to perform more hands-on investigation of Dean's Flores, since he claimed that touching an ‘active’ Flores was an extremely hazardous activity.

“If the Flores interprets the touch of your fingers as being an attempt at penetration, it may literally suck your whole arm inside the Omega’s passage. Since a release can’t be forced, the only options would be to amputate or wait several hours for the Omegá to release you, after which time we would _still_ have to amputate since every bone in your hand, wrist and lower arm would have been completely pulverised,” Dr Morgan announced calmly, with a certain degree of satisfaction when the gawpers had hurriedly moved away from close proximity to Dean’s groin.

But even limited to the assault of the audience's eyes and thoughtless, cruel comments, the experience had been so humiliating for Dean that the only reason he'd managed not to tell each and every one of the perverted bastards to go fuck themselves was that his gag had been replaced by Becky as soon as he was capable of breathing normally once more.

Dean had very little direct memory of the initial three hours, having been so drowned by sensation that his responses had been driven by instinct rather than any conscious thought but, since two of the overhead screens were now helpfully playing looped highlights of his body arching and shuddering through multiple self-inflicted orgasms, it was impossible for him to deny even to himself that he had, indeed, played the part of a 'slut' with evident enthusiasm.

Although the lecture theatre was heated, Dean was feeling chilled and intensely uncomfortable, hours of sweating had left his skin sodden damp and it felt like he was sitting in a puddle of wet slick and, as though that wasn't already enough cold moisture on his skin, he just couldn't seem to stop the tears that were dripping slowly from the corners of his eyes and running in sad rivulets down the sides of his face to further dampen his sweat-soaked hair.

The third, central screen was still linked to the camera aimed between his thighs, displaying a ten foot high picture of his wet, swollen Flores that even hours after the peg had dropped out was still considerably dilated.

That was, Becky enthused to all who questioned it, because having finally experienced the pleasure of penetration, Dean was remaining eager for a repeat of the procedure and his flores wouldn't seal itself completely until several hours of empty neglect finally convinced it that the 'fun' was over for the day.

Becky had been so sorely tempted to prove the truth of her assertion, when some people had expressed doubt that Dean could possibly want yet more sexual satisfaction, that she had almost reinserted the peg to prove herself correct.

Again, it had been Dr Morgan who had prevented that occurring by pointing out that the lecture theatre was needed later that evening so restarting another several hours of Dean writhing on the peg was logistically impractical.

"Oh, well," Becky sighed, pouting with disappointment. "Maybe next time, then."

She then declared to all the audience that she was planning to have another public lecture in two weeks, so that everyone would have the opportunity to see how much more 'eagerly' Dean would respond after she had worked closely with him to encourage his 'natural proclivities' to fully emerge.

When he was finally wheeled back to his hospital room on the gurney, no one bothering this time to offer him the courtesy of a blanket to cover his shame, Dean discovered that the room had been completely transformed,

HIs bed had been removed, as had the side cabinets, and now the only furniture was a large padded gynaecological bed with fixed stirrups that cradled his entire calves and ankles and, rather than having ankle straps, the stirrups were more like knee length boots so that once he was positioned, and the 'boots' were closed, there was no possibility whatsoever of him contorting to release himself.

The bed was, surprisingly, not uncomfortable physically. The plastic padding under his buttocks was sufficiently deep and his legs were not opened so wide that his inner thighs were overly stretched, but the positioning of the bed and his body meant his flores was on full view to the door of the room so that it was, unavoidably, the first and _only_ thing anyone would notice when entering.

Particularly since Becky’s final act before patting him on the head like a particularly pleasing puppy was to produce a thin, long peg with a large, football sized ball on one end and slip the thin end into his still open flores, leaving the ball on prominent display between his thighs, apparently to prevent the peg being pulled so far into his womb that retrieval would be problematical.

Because the peg itself was only a couple of inches wide in diameter, it didn’t replicate the earlier dramatic effect of the larger peg and instead merely caused mild sensations of undeniably soothing pleasure to thrum through his lower body, replacing the awful emptiness with the distraction of an almost satisfying feeling of his ‘hunger’ being sated.

And so, still gagged and now lightly plugged, Dean was left alone to inwardly digest the last eight hours of his life.

~

“It wouldn’t normally be advisable to allow a visit to a patient on the first day of practical treatment,” Becky advised Sam and Azazel when they arrived at her office a couple of hours later. “But because you are his guardian, Sam, and have the right to override the advice of both myself and your foster-sire, and also yes, of course, you’re right that it _is_ his birthday, so I am reluctantly making an exception. But I feel it is important that we cover a few things before that visit so that you, Sam, in particular, understand what is happening here.

“I took your advice, Azazel, and recorded the session for Sam so he can see with his own eyes that nothing inappropriate occurred to his Omegá today. Obviously, for time-saving and convenience, I have edited the session just to show the high-lights. Let’s watch that first together, and then I can answer any questions either of you have.”

For the next fifteen minutes Sam watched the screen, his cheeks flaring as hotly red as his eyes as he watched Dean on the screen. He was silent, except for loudly exclaiming ‘shit’, in shock, when the camera zeroed in on the way Dean’s flores had burst open in wide unmistakeable welcome for the insertion of the peg. Then, the only sound Sam made was a low, growling snarl as he watched several minutes footage of Dean bucking in ecstasy as he writhed around the peg he had somehow suctioned into himself with such greedy hunger.

Becky deliberately ended the recording with a freeze-frame of Dean’s face contorted into orgasmic pleasure, his head thrown backwards, eyes closed, his mouth openly gasping, his throat gleaming with sweat and she left that picture on display on the monitor, watching Sam shuffling awkwardly on his chair as he obviously fought his instinctive Alpha arousal at the sight.

She exchanged a secretive smirk with Azazel, then turned her attention to Sam. “So, as you can see for yourself, Dean had a _lovely_ time, just as I promised, and the only reason he was restrained at all was for his own protection. Sadly, Omegáres _do_ have an unfortunate tendency to self-abuse themselves too much if left to their own devices.”

Sam shook his head in confusion, his brow deeply furrowed into a frown. “I don’t understand,” he admitted. “I thought… I really thought Dean didn’t want to be… be…” he stumbled.

“I doubt he realised what he wanted before today,” Azazel replied, his tone deeply sympathetic. “But, you can see for yourself how he reacted. The minute the poor pup finally had an opportunity to gain the satisfaction he naturally craves, his body took over and greedily snatched at it. That’s what I’ve been struggling to explain to you, Sam. Although your mother clearly had the best of intentions, she really had no understanding of how to care for Dean properly. It has been unbelievably cruel that he’s spent almost two whole years since his presentation having his needs totally neglected. Still, I suppose he would probably have suffered the same even if he hadn’t been adopted into your family.”

“WHAT?” Sam exclaimed. “Dean’s not adopted,” he protested.

Azazel shrugged innocently. “Well, of course he is. He must be. Mary Winchester’s birth of _you_ was witnessed, so _you_ can’t be the adoptee and, clearly, she can’t have given birth to _both_ of you. Actually, I did a little research into your family records and it appears that your mother’s whelping of Dean was more than a little peculiar. Mary Winchester supposedly suddenly gave birth, a full month after her original due date, and by the time her husband returned home it was all over. Labour, birth and clean-up all within less than a two hour window of time.

“I don’t know, but common sense suggests that perhaps Mary was genuinely pregnant with your _real_ brother when she married but maybe she lost the pup in late pregnancy and felt the need to cover up her loss by taking in another’s child. Since Dean’s designation would have been practically obvious from birth, I suspect he was rejected by his true mother and offered to yours. Perhaps by the midwife who would have needed to be part of the deception. The fact your mother married an Alpha would support the idea she wouldn’t have felt any bigotry against a child of a different designation.

“Now, whilst all of that is pure speculation, as an educated man I find that to be the most logical explanation of the whole conundrum of how you could possibly have an Omegá ‘brother’.”

Sam swallowed heavily, his eyes wide as he considered Azazel’s words for a long while, before nodding his agreement. “It does make more sense than anything else I’ve considered,” he admitted reluctantly. “So Dean isn’t even my _half_ -brother. I kind of suspected as much.”

“Not that it makes any difference legally,” Azazel assured him, “but I’ve noticed you’re quite reluctant to admit your physical attraction to him, so I just wanted to reassure you that it’s not only perfectly understandable, what with him being an Omegá and you being a teenage Alpha, but there couldn’t even be any moral issues with you ever taking advantage of what you are _legally_ entitled to as his Alpha Guardian.”

“It does seem so unfair to Dean if you don’t,” Becky interjected. “You can see for yourself that Dean really craves that kind of attention.”

“Well, no need to dwell on that now,” Azazel said, moving on before Sam could formulate a response. “The important thing right now is Dean’s current and ongoing peg treatment. Perhaps Dr Rosen could explain about the reason for using such a large peg in today’s session.”

Becky smiled at Sam. “Luckily for your Omegá, Mr Al’asfar has managed to convince the authorities to spend a considerable amount of money having a specialist peg created for Dean to wear outside of your home, instead of merely borrowing some Omegá seating from another state for him to use. He said you didn’t like the idea of Dean impaling himself onto a seat in public. So Dean will require three pegs. One middle sized one for daily use, one full size one fixed onto a mounting stool which will be delivered to your house and then a small peg for the rest of the time that will act not unlike a small pup’s pacifier. Once a Flores has been awakened, it requires constant attention but it is generally enough for an Omegá to be plugged with a very thin, size number one peg that their internal muscles can simply ‘suckle’ on for a low level of sensation. Dean is currently enjoying one of those. You’ll notice when we visit that Dean’s whole attitude will be mellow and relaxed because of that peg.”

“What’s the ‘mounting stool’ for?” Sam asked suspiciously.

It was Azazel who replied. “Nobody is saying you have to mount him, Sam, but Dean needs to have both his holes _completely_ filled at least once a day if he’s going to remain healthy and happy. The mounting stool is a size six peg, as was inserted in this video, but it is fixed on a seat that then tips forward slightly to allow clear access to his anal passage. You can choose to fill that with a peg, if you prefer, though the stool is designed to allow penile insertion if that’s your preference. It’s the design that was perfected for Rut Houses, admittedly, but don’t let its unfortunate origins put you off its use. It really is a perfectly designed piece of equipment for ensuring Omegáren needs are satisfied.”

Sam shook his head in confusion. “I really don’t know about any of this. Dean doesn’t… Dean isn’t…. Dean just isn’t like this. He doesn’t want this. I _know_ he doesn’t. How do I know you aren’t all just trying to trick me or something and you’re just screwing with my head to make me think this is all okay when my gut tells me it isn’t?”

Azazel looked at him sadly. “I thought you trusted me, Sam,” he said, his tone hurt. “But, I suppose although I think of you almost as though you are _my_ son now, I don’t have the right to expect you to feel any equal affection for me.” He gestured at the screen, where Dean’s expression of ecstatic release seemed to speak volumes. “If you can’t believe the evidence of your own eyes, I can’t imagine what words I can speak to convince you.”

Sam swallowed heavily, his eyes haunted and guilty. “I’m sorry, Mr Al’asfar. I didn’t mean to be rude to you and I _do_ trust you. I’m just struggling to understand how just being an Omegá could possibly change Dean’s personality so fundamentally as to make him a totally different person to the one I know.”

“Perhaps, like a cuckoo, he always portrayed the personality you and, particularly, your _mother_ expected him to possess. Maybe, under Dr Rosen’s care, what’s finally able to emerge is the _real_ Dean Winchester.”

Sam swallowed again, then abruptly made a decision.

“I think, maybe, I want go home now. I don’t think I want to see Dean today. Maybe it _would_ be better to wait until the end of the treatment like you both suggested.”

~

Dean knew from eight days of Becky repeating the process that it would take several more hours before his flores completely closed and for the entirety of those hours it would take every ounce of self-control not to beg for the re-insertion of the peg.

He had, humiliatingly, given in to the urge on the third day, driven almost crazy by the terrible ache but rather than solving the problem it had merely prolonged it since his body had simply started the entire process all over once more. He'd understood then that whether he was penetrated once a day or several times, his cunt would deal with the invasion with identical ravenous greed every time.

Apparently, penetration of his rectum produced the same response, according to Becky, which was why the rut houses had worked so well. Even if an Omegá serviced several dozen Alphas in a single day, the last Alpha would receive exactly as much attention to their cock as the first. The only difference between the reaction of his cunt and his ass was duration. His rectal muscles were unlikely to entrap an invader for more than ten minutes or so, rather than several hours, although it was apparently impossible to force a release from either of his holes.

It seemed odd, on reflection, that anyone would want to place their cock into such a vicious, squeezing vice as an Omegá's Flores at all.

According to Becky, the process was pretty agonising for the Alpha but, particularly when lost in rut rage, an Alpha found the pleasure of relief worth the pain of achieving it.

“Of course, were a Beta to mount you the pressure you exert inside your anal passage would cause terrible, irreparable damage to a Beta penis. Only Alphas have genitals physically resilient enough to withstand the force of an Omegá’s anal squeezing, just as only a Primá can safely enter your vagina. Even if an Alpha was built with sufficient penile size to penetrate your vagina, their penis would not survive many minutes of abuse by an Omegá.”

Becky was intending to introduce him to the 'pleasure' of rectal penetration now that he had apparently 'adjusted' to daily pegging of his vagina. As usual, she began the process by gagging him which, he’d realised, had nothing to do with compliance as she always chose to use a simple ball gag but was primarily so he couldn’t interrupt the constant flow of her own verbal diarrhoea.

"I've spoken to your guardian, Sam, and he's signed the consents for you to be fitted with a dual peg. It's a sensible option because if your vagina is constantly filled, your flores will remain open and that fully exposes your anal passage to view. That would make it almost irresistible to any teen Alpha so it wouldn't be fair on the Alphas in your school if you were constantly flaunting yourself at them like a little slut, since Sam is saying he isn't willing to share you with them. So you’ll just have to put up with being deprived of their attention, whether you like it or not.

"That’s why we'll peg both holes throughout the day. It's a little more distracting for you, since the internal muscles of your passages will spasm on an alternate rhythm. Whenever you hear people talking about Omegáres 'dancing' on pegs, they are usually actually referring to Omegáres wearing dual pegs. Although it appears to anyone watching that you are bouncing up and down on a single vaginal peg, what's actually happening is you are receiving alternating jolts of sensation from _two_ inserted pegs and that will cause you to rock your hips and bounce forward and backward as you enjoy the sensations.

"Although Betas obviously aren't sexually attracted to Omegáres, many _do_ take a certain voyeuristic pleasure in watching Omegáren 'peg-dancing' and I know you still find it difficult to be on display like that, given how sulky you get when people come to watch your daily sessions, so we'll get you used to the feeling today in private, then we’ll have a session out in the general ward tomorrow so you can get used to the attention you'll generate long before you return to living life outside the hospital. I'm a great believer in immersion therapy. "

"You're still nicely dilated from earlier but your flores has closed a couple of inches so you shouldn't have problem holding this much smaller peg inside you. This is a number four. It's still rather substantial but, because you're now so used to a number six, you won't find the four to be anywhere near the distraction of a full sized peg. You'll hardly lose any lung capacity to accommodate a number four and because you have the typical bowed legs of an Omegá you'll soon learn to walk with it inside you. Let's pop it in and let you adjust to it."

She slipped the peg inside him, letting his flores do most of the work, and laughed when he immediately threw back his head and arched into an instantaneous orgasm. "You are becoming so wonderfully responsive," she praised. "With this size peg, the orgasmic response won't be constant. It will creep up on you at intervals, probably no more than two or three times an hour rather than being a constant urge. Now I just need to pop a peg inside your rectum. Although you don’t actually need anything more than a plain, smooth peg in your anus since that passage naturally expects the smooth texture of an Alpha penis, I prefer to use a ridged peg because, although it’s the same size, it creates a far more interesting effect on your internal nerve endings.”

Becky pressed the tip of a number one vaginal peg against the rim of his ass and he felt his flores immediately catch hold of it and suck it into place deep between his buttocks. He gasped around the gag, shocked by the sudden feeling of being filled in both passages at once, and then he felt a jolt of sensation in his bottom, followed immediately by a similar jolt in his vagina and then, like a slow drumming beat, the two sensations continued to alternate in counterpoint to each other, causing his hips to buck and dance wildly in response.

“I’ve got some paperwork to do in my office,” Becky then announced brightly. “I’ll pop back in a few hours and see how you’re getting on. You’ll probably make quite a mess in the meanwhile. Your groin area is going to be so confused by all the contrasting nerve impulses that you’ll probably be rather incontinent and pee yourself a few times but that’s the typical response to this particular type of dual _ridged_ pegging. It’s another great argument for having you docked, because it’s easier to plug a urinal hole than a penis. I’m sure Sam will see the light after you’ve piddled on the carpet a few times.”

~

It was almost three hours before the door opened again and by this time Dean was sobbing uncontrollably.

He had indeed pissed himself several times and with the number four plug incapable of fully sealing his vaginal entrance, slick was also dripping in a constant flow onto the puddle of fluid building on the floor beneath his bed.

The constant sensations alternating between his two passages had built into over a dozen full blown orgasmic seizures and the muscles of the backs of his legs were aching and his knees were in agony since his lower legs were being held so rigidly by the stirrups that each jerk of his hips was wrenching them with considerable violence.

Urine had also puddled onto the base of the bed, so his buttocks felt raw and sore because they were slipping and sliding over the wet plastic of the gynaecological bed’s mattress and he was pretty sure he was developing blisters or bed sores.

If this was Becky Rosen’s fucked up idea of convincing him to ‘embrace’ his designation, it was missing the target by a long mile and he intended to tell her so with great vehemence the minute she took the fucking gag out of his mouth.

But when the door opened, it wasn’t Becky Rosen who walked in.

Unbelievably, it was someone that Dean had only ever seen on the internet. Someone he had sometimes barely believed existed at all.

_Daniel._


	58. Chapter Fifty Four

 

Being well into his ninth decade, Daniel had sadly seen some terrible sights with his own eyes. So much so, that the conditions he found Dean in not only did not particularly surprise him but, to be perfectly honest, were sadly far from one of the worst sights he had witnessed.

As far as he could see, the worst injury Dean had suffered to date was to his pride and that, whilst unconscionable, was at least reparable.

The younger Omegá was still in possession of his male genitals, for one, and oddly, the fact that being dually plugged was causing incontinence was evidence in itself that it was highly likely he was still a virgin. Although all Omegáres could easily heal skin and cell damage, they weren't always so successful in repairing their nerve endings. So one of the worst side effects of Omegáres suffering a multitude of Alpha rapes was that they lost a large degree of sensation in their anal passage as a consequence and some of the worst cases even became inured to enjoying stimulation of that area of their flores entirely. So whilst Daniel suspected the inappropriate use of a _vaginal_ peg in Dean’s ass was the most likely cause of his ‘problem’, the fact he’d suffered it was, overall, good news.

Daniel reached all the above conclusions in the mere seconds it took him to stride across the room and hurriedly, though extremely gently, remove the gag from Dean's mouth.

He paused just long enough to stroke Dean's face gently with his right hand, his fingers caressing the tear-stained skin of the pup's face in a gesture of infinite tenderness, then turned to swiftly unfasten the stirrup boots so he could gently ease Dean's legs out of their locked position.

"Easy, pup," he soothed, as Dean whimpered in pain as his legs struggled to straighten despite the taut tension in his upper thighs and the swollen redness around his knee joints.

Totally uncaring of the fact the hem of his designer gown was becoming piss-stained as he stood in the deep puddle of urine at the foot of Dean's bed, Daniel carefully massaged Dean's calves, easing their knotted muscles with deft, gentle strokes.

Dean's body twisted into an orgasmic arch and he cried out then sagged back onto the mattress, his cheeks flaming with obvious mortification.

"Release the pegs," Daniel suggested gently.

"I can't," Dean gasped, miserably, squirming on the bed as his hips continued to jerk and twitch in response to the internal stimuli.

"You can," Daniel assured him with gentle firmness. "Ignore whatever that bitch-whore has taught you. You are Omegá, Dean. Your body is yours and yours alone to control. Release the fear and you'll release the pegs. Breathe with me. Nice and slow. Deep breaths. In and out. Now slow the breaths. Slower. Slower. That’s right. Just relax. Deep breaths. That's it. Good pup. Nice and slow and steady. And relax...and....now...release."

Dean's Flores abruptly opened widely and ejected both pegs so that they dropped to land on the wet floor.

"Good pup," Daniel praised. "Keep your breathing steady, slow, in and out, that's good. That's perfect. Now close your Flores, Dean. No, don't strain, just relax and breathe and imagine it closing, like shutting a door, pull it slowly tight, that's it, Nice and slow and steady. Keep breathing for me. In and out, nice deep breaths, and close yourself up. just let it go, Dean, let your blood cool, let it ease out of you, slow, steady breaths and....there. Well done. Good pup."

Dean looked down in bewildered amazement to see his Flores was now tightly closed and promptly burst into fresh tears.

Daniel hurried up the bed to his side, wrapped his arms around the sobbing pup and held his shaking body in a tight, protective hug.

"Fu...fu...fu...fucking BITCH!" Dean howled.

And amused, despite himself, by Dean's feisty yell, Daniel firmly nodded his agreement to the statement.

"She l...l...l...lied to me. S...s...s...said it c...c...c...couldn't b...be..fo...forced," Dean sobbed.

"I don't disagree with the bitch part," Daniel replied gently, "but I don't think she _lied_ exactly. Truth is, nobody understands Omegáres except other Omegáres. Even after decades of living with me, my Primá has no real idea of what makes an Omegá tick. A lot of it is our own fault, Dean. We choose to keep our secrets and mysteries to ourselves. And one of those secrets is we can _always_ release. We just don't necessarily choose to do so."

"But...but I..."

"I know," Daniel soothed. "The problem is fear. The Omegáren adrenaline response is loss of muscular control. The so-called ragdoll effect. When we become frightened, we seem to become helpless. We go limp instead of fleeing or fighting and that appears to be a weakness to Betas. It's a weakness they can exploit unless we learn to control our fear response. By telling you that your Flores wouldn't respond to your wishes, the doctor frightened you so much that it became true, but it was that _fear_ that prevented it from closing. She told you that you couldn't release the peg and then it was your _fear_ of it being trapped inside you that prevented you from being able to release it until you were completely exhausted.

"But whenever you face a situation where your body seems to be out of your control, you just need to remember that what is _truly_ out of control is your fear. Take control of your emotions and you can control your body."

Daniel sighed deeply and offered Dean a wry smile.

"Of course, that's easier said than done, sometimes. It's hard not to lose yourself on occasion because you're so responsive to stimulation and sometimes, trust me, it's often really _enjoyable_ to just go with the flow and let it happen. But never when you are not 'safe', Dean. Never let yourself embrace the sensations unless you are absolutely positive it's safe for you to do so.”

"What's the fucking point of an adrenaline response of being helpless?" Dean grumbled, sniffing furiously to try to control his tears.

"We only _seem_ to be helpless," Daniel clarified, "and our _apparent_ vulnerability triggers an intensely protective response in Primáres and Pack Alphas, even when they're lost in Primal rage. If our reaction to primal Primá anger was aggressive rather than submissive there would be a possibility of them inadvertently hurting us and that would lead, inevitably, to a lot of dead Primáres."

Dean blinked in complete confusion. "Why dead _Primáres_?"

"Because although a Primá _can_ harm an Omegá, the _normal_ response of a Primá faced with the realisation they have attacked an Omegá would be suicide," Daniel replied, with not a little satisfaction. "Even knowing they have inadvertently caused harm usually sends them into a spiral of depressive rage and self-harm. It would take an extremely strong-minded Primá to overcome the instinct to overly punish themselves even for a genuine mistake. So we Omegáres tend to play a submissive role simply to protect the delicate sensibilities of our surprisingly rather _vulnerable_ mates."

Dean gaped at Daniel in astonishment. "You're saying you fake it?"

Daniel smirked, an expression of smug satisfaction on his beautiful face, "We don't fake the automatic physical reaction," he clarified. "We simply sometimes choose to give in to our instincts rather than fight them. But the fact remains that we _can_ fight them if we choose to do so. The only time it’s virtually impossible to fight our basic nature is when faced with the pheromones of our _own_ mates. They have a particularly potent effect on us that is _almost_ impossible to resist but, given that we are unlikely to choose to mate with an _unsafe_ Primá, that’s one of the examples of when it’s _safe_ for us to embrace our natures. On any other occasion, it’s possible for us to resist although sometimes it takes a little practice before we learn how to do so.”

"And any Omegá can do that?" Dean begged, a little desperately.

"I've only ever met one Omegá, Claire, actually incapable of doing so, and Claire is a particularly sad case who was so terribly victimised by Beta abuse that sanity was lost completely. All the other Free-Beta born Omegáres will _gradually_ learn how to overcome their unfortunate upbringings after embracing Pack Life. Time is the best healer, Dean, and we Omegáres live _very_ long lives. For one such as you, brought into the Pack barely touched, learning to reclaim your power should be a simple thing."

"Barely touched?" Dean protested furiously.

"Forgive me," Daniel said, with genuine apology. "I am not trivialising your sufferings. I'm merely putting them in perspective considering how much worse they might have been."

"Yeah, I hear you," Dean admitted. "I was kind of expecting to be in a rut house already."

Daniel shuddered with suppressed rage. "Fortunately there are very few Betas still daring to openly practice that abomination. Though I do understand that four school districts in this state are currently negotiating with Sioux Falls to transfer their teen Alphas to _your_ High school, so I expect that although the practice of actual rut houses will cease, the Betas will still endeavour to create situations that make optimal use of any available Omegá.

“Still, we can stop it happening to _you_ at least. Do you feel able to walk yet? We really could do with leaving sooner rather than later. I deliberately arrived late in the evening so it would be virtually impossible for the hospital staff to locate a decision-maker capable of devising a safe way to prevent your departure but the longer we tarry, the more chance they have of attempting to stop us. Though don’t worry too much because, honestly, I doubt there _is_ anything they could safely attempt now in any case."

Dean blinked with astonishment. "You're planning to just walk out of here with me?"

Daniel shrugged delicately. "Of course. No Beta would dare lay hands on me to prevent my passage, and if we tightly link arms as we walk, they can't even attempt to stop _you_ without inadvertently possibly touching me. None would dare risk it."

"But you're just an Omegá too," Dean blurted in confusion. “Why would they care about touching _you?_ ”

Daniel smiled at him sadly. "I wish I had time to explain to you right now that there is nothing 'just' about _any_ Omegá but, for now, in terms you will understand, suffice it to say that any assault on my body would be taken as one on Ophriel and no Beta would ever dare raise a finger against a Primá. There is no Beta Law that could ever prevent the Pack demanding full reparation. Even a fingertip brushing my flesh without invitation would be enough for Ophriel to act against them with the full wrath of the Omadonna and no redress would be legally possible for them to prevent it.

"Had they anticipated my arrival, they would have been able to raise a physical barrier to prevent my access into the building but, since I am already inside, they cannot raise a barrier against my exit. That would be ‘illegally detaining’ me and, again, that would be perceived as an assault on my body by my Primá. They must, by both Pack and Beta Law, allow me to leave _unimpeded_ and they cannot physically wrest you from my grasp so, you see, there is _nothing_ to prevent us leaving."

"And you could take me into Pack Land, past the border without being stopped?" Dean demanded incredulously. “I don’t even have a passport.”

“I’m 99% certain they wouldn’t dare stop my car at the border, but even that 1% possibility is too great a risk so I’ll be taking you direct to the airport and onto the plane of the Grandé Alpha Primá himself, Castiel Cainson. As a Grandé, he has full diplomatic immunity and entering any of his physical property is akin to crossing the border anyway. If it were _his_ car parked outside this building, you would be equally protected from the moment you entered it but, for speed and efficiency, the plan we have devised will be equally effective.”

Dean frowned thoughtfully. “But won’t the government just demand my return?”

“You are a bright one, aren’t you?” Daniel said, with an approving smile. “You’re correct, of course, and that does create a rather awful problem I need to fully advise you of before we leave.  You’ll have to choose a mate almost immediately on arrival in Pack Land. Please believe we are _all_ appalled to put you in that position but be equally assured that every single unattached Primá we can get hold of will be offered for your selection.  It’s unforgivable that you’re being placed in a position of _having_ to mate but we’re hoping to at least find someone you find acceptable.

“However, we will make it absolutely clear to all the candidates that you also have the option to demand the mating bond is then immediately severed to free you completely.  That’s not a light decision to make, since you would be rendered barren and unable to _ever_ mate again, but it’s still your right to choose _that_ option too. Though we pray it wouldn’t come to that. Trust me, there are several particularly nice Primáres within your options and it’s highly probable _one_ of them might suit your taste.”

“I really, honestly, don’t understand what you’re saying,” Dean confessed. “I thought Omegáres were sold to Primáres like…well, like slaves, I guess.”

Daniel rolled his eyes. “It’s that pesky bride price. Causes a lot of misunderstandings, doesn’t it? Poor Ophriel paid so much for _me_ that he ended up in debt for over twenty years. I knew when I chose him that he’d have to borrow the money to settle my bride-price but I wouldn’t have let him mate me if he hadn’t been willing to do so.  I _could_ have insisted my parents reduced my price but why would I have done _that?_ I was determined to have a mate who treasured me more than _anything_ , so I made my parents demand the price of a small country for the honour of having me as a bride.”

“So, let me get this right, you didn’t just go to the highest bidder?” Dean questioned cautiously.

“Pah, if it worked that way, I’d be the Omegá Queen of America,” Daniel laughed.  “Seth Adamson sniffed around me literally for years, begging me to choose him as a mate, long before he met Evan.  I was the only Pack born Omegá of my generation so I was a terribly spoilt little brat and I had _all_ the Primáres in the Western World chasing the right to worship my flores. But Seth was such an odious bore. Like just about every one of the Grandés of Adam’s line, come to think of it. They are all born with such a stick up their ass that they’re pretty unbearable until someone can be bothered to train them to see life the Omegáren way.

“They’re all so stuffed full of self-importance and so busy pontificating the importance of stiff, inflexible, traditional values that they’d send me to sleep just trying to pay attention to them. Even poor Castiel is sadly guilty of _some_ of that crap though his BetaWife, Meg, is gradually managing to knock the pompous stuffing out of him so I think _he’s_ probably worth your consideration. He’s very pretty and it isn’t particularly hard to train a Primá to behave himself. They quickly learn to be wary of upsetting their Brides.

“When we first mated, whenever Ophriel was stupid enough to dare to refuse me something, I just trapped him inside my Flores until he cried for mercy. He soon learned the only way to ‘force’ release was making me happy. He’s a clever man. He hasn’t refused me _anything_ in the last fifty years,” Daniel grinned expansively.

Dean barked with laughter, but then sobered quickly, biting his lower lip nervously. “I can’t believe you’re really here, or that anyone from the Packs cares what happens to me at all. I definitely can’t imagine having _options_. Actually, are you really sure I _do_ have options? I mean I’m not doubting you, Daniel, that you came here with a genuine offer but what’s to say those Primáres won’t take one look at me and change their minds? It’s not like I’m anything like they expect an Omegá to be, is it?”

Daniel smiled gently. “Crowley, who is one of Castiel’s First Alphas _is_ pronouncing that you are, how did he put it? Oh, yes. ‘As big as a horse’,” he admitted. “Megan, Castiel’s BetaWife, which incidentally makes her the most powerful and influential Beta in the whole Mid West has announced that you are an ‘Absolutely stunning statuesque supermodel’ with the most beautiful face she has ever seen. And, having met you, I have to agree that _both_ of them are right. You really _are_ the most magnificent looking Omegá, Dean.  I can’t wait to get you out of those _stupid_ clothes and into something more appropriate.  I favour Dior myself, but every Design house in the world will flock to win the honour to dress you. And if you decide to mate a Primá with insufficiently deep pockets to look after you properly, we’ll put your new wardrobe on Ophriel’s account.”

Dean grinned at him. “I think Sam would curl up and die if I started wearing dresses but, I have to admit, you always look so great in them. I used to spend hours searching for images of you on the internet. It doesn’t seem real that you’re actually here. It’s like some kind of fantasy come true. I guess that really makes me seem childish, huh?  Oh, what about Sam?  I get how me having a mating bite would stop the government wanting me back but would they just agree not to take Sam back too? Maybe they’d be pleased enough about not having to deal with an Alpha to just let him go without a fight.”

Daniel did a slight double-take.  “Sam’s your ‘brother’? Your Alpha Guardian?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, “and I know no-one believes he really _is_ my brother, so you don’t have to pretend you do either, but the fact is that he _is_ my brother and I can’t possibly go anywhere without him. The only reason he isn’t already in a military academy is that I’ve put a claim in to be _his_ guardian. If I leave, they’ll grab him. Hell, they’d do it just to spite me. So even if I could face the idea of abandoning him here, with no family to support him, I definitely can’t let the government throw him into the army school.”

Daniel thought furiously, understanding Dean’s point but struggling to find a resolution. “I don’t know,” he admitted reluctantly. “I don’t have the ability or the authority to take him with us today. We couldn’t take the risk, anyway, of stopping anywhere on the way to the airport and if I leave here, without you, to try to get something organised I’ll never get the opportunity to get back inside this building. Like I said, I caught them by surprise today. They won’t ever allow it to happen twice. I know the Pack _would_ welcome Sam if he wanted to join. We don’t turn anyone away who genuinely wants to embrace Pack Life and, maybe you’re right, maybe if we could get him over the border the government might not fight too hard to get him back.

“All I could absolutely promise you is that I would do my best to retrieve him for you _after_ you’ve been flown to safety. I’m not going to lie to you and say it’s guaranteed but it definitely _might_ be possible, always assuming he agrees to do it. I must admit that we weren’t prepared for you wanting Sam to accompany you. We made the assumption you’d be desperate to escape the ownership of a teen Alpha.”

“Sam’s designation isn’t his fault any more than mine is,” Dean argued. “He’s my little brother. We’re the only family we’ve got. We’ve got to look out for each other.”

“Forgive me for saying this, Dean, but it doesn’t seem to me like he’s looking out very much for _you,_ ” Daniel said, quietly, gesturing at the room in general rather than specifically at Dean’s dishevelled state. “You do realise Dr Rosen couldn’t have done _any_ of this without ‘Sam’ signing the permissions?”

“Sam’s a bit screwed up at the moment,” Dean replied hotly. “Like you said, he’s a teen Alpha flooded with a lot of hormones, he’s just watched our parents and our uncle murder each other, he’s getting influenced by some teacher from his school and I think they’re _both_ getting fucked over by ‘Becky’.  He’s fucked up a bit, sure, but nothing is Sam’s fault. He’s just a pup.”

“So are you,” Daniel pointed out softly.

“Yeah, well, I’m not an Alpha. I think being an Alpha screws _everyone_ up a bit.  He’ll figure it out and he _will_ protect me as much as he’s able to. We’re brothers.”

“Then I absolutely swear to you, Dean, that if you come with me now I _will_ drive straight from the airport after dropping you off and do everything within my power to retrieve him for you,’ Daniel promised sincerely.

“I believe you,” Dean said, but smiled wryly. “But even if you do, and he arrives in Pack Land and the government then demand his return, will the Pack hand him back?” he challenged.

Daniel swallowed heavily, his eyes darkening with grief. “No Pack will risk war to save a single Alpha,” he admitted. “For a single Omegá, yes, possibly, but not for an Alpha. But it probably wouldn’t happen. it would probably be fine.”

“But it might happen?” Dean questioned.

Daniel thought about it seriously. “Actually,” he said, reluctantly, “it might be _more_ probable simply because they would be so incensed about not being able to demand _your_ return.”

“I know,” Dean said. “I figured that much. I just wanted to know if I could trust _you_ to admit the truth of the situation. And you did, so at least I know I can trust everything else you’ve said to me today too. When I _do_ eventually reach a Pack Land, it _will_ be a good and safe place for me. But that won’t be today. I can’t go until Sam is old enough to come with me.”

Tears welled in Daniel’s eyes and one broke free and rolled down his face. “Please, Dean. Don’t do this. Come with me today. You need to understand that…that when I said all the Primáres would want you, I meant _now._ You need to understand that if you stay here I can’t see you even escaping this hospital intact and you sure as hell won’t make it through the next three weeks as a virgin, let alone the next three years. There will be some, even _many,_ Primáres who will find it impossible to accept a bride who has been abused in that fashion. It’s not your looks that would be an issue to them, it would be your _history._ ”

“Yeah?” Dean demanded angrily. “They’d reject me for having been abused? Victim blaming much, huh?”

Daniel shrugged. “It’s the way some Primáres are,” he confessed.

“Then fuck ‘em,” Dean spat.  “Fuck the whole damned lot of them. If they think it’s better to have a selfish asshole as a bride than one who understands a fifteen year old pup can’t get abandoned by the only person he’s got left in the world, then… then… fuck ‘em all.

“I already knew an Omegá could say ‘yes’,” Dean continued thoughtfully. “But I now understand an Omegá can also say ’no’. That’s important, Daniel. That’s significant. It means I can enter Pack Land and never say yes to a mate, anyway, doesn’t it? Well, once I’m over eighteen, anyway.”

“Were you, or any other Omegá , to refuse a mate, then your choice would be accepted and your welcome in Pack Land would still be as secure,” Daniel admitted. “Omagáres are considered to be holy by the Pack and that isn’t just wordplay. An Omegá can do no wrong in Pack eyes.”

“Then, if I can 'do no wrong’, how can anyone condemn me for choosing to say no to leaving with you today?”

“You don’t understand,” Daniel said, his tone thick with despair. “I haven’t explained it well. A Primá would not be condemning you by turning away from you. They would not consider you to have done _wrong_. They simply would find it unbearable. You would be living witness to their own failure to save you.”

“Sucks to be them,” Dean said unsympathetically. “I’m not asking for them to save me. I’m not asking YOU to save me, either. I don't need 'saving'. I agreed to come here to this hospital for a reason and I didn't ever imagine it would be a walk in the park. I sure as shit didn't really know how fucked up it would be but nothing has changed, Daniel. My reason for being here is still valid. I came here so I could keep Sam safe and if I give up and leave now and just abandon him, I've gone through all this shit for nothing."

Daniel shook his head helplessly. "I hear you, Dean, but... how can I walk away knowing I've failed to help you at all?"

"You _have_ helped me. You can't even imagine how much you've helped. You've given me the only thing I really needed to get through this crap. You've given me _hope_  and that's everything. I needed to know there was something worth fighting for, some place genuinely worth us running to if we can just survive these next few years. For all I knew before today, living in a Pack could have been worse. Well, as bad, anyway. Not sure anything could actually be worse. But now I know there's somewhere we can both go to. Somewhere we will both be safe. Knowing that will make this bearable, Daniel. I swear to you, you _have_ helped me."

Daniel sighed heavily. “I’m not sure I can bear this, Dean, though I have to respect your choice. It’s not as though I can drag you out of here against your will. And I do understand why you believe you need to stay but I’m not sure you really understand the reality of your decision. You must know, even if Sam truly is worthy of the sacrifice you are making, that he will still abuse you. It’s inevitable. He’s a teen Alpha and you’re his legal property according to the fucked up laws of this god-forsaken land and, sooner or later, he _will_ rape you.”

Dean shook his head firmly. “He won’t,” he said. “He _can't._ Oh, I accept he probably, inevitably will mount me at some point which, ewww, isn’t something I really want to think about before I have to, but it won’t be ‘rape’ because I have already said ‘yes’, Daniel. Do you understand me? I have said ‘yes’ to Sam. I have made him that promise. If, god forbid, it happens then it’s okay. I said ‘yes’.”

Daniel blinked at him in astonishment and not a little approval. “Is there no sacrifice you consider too great for your brother?”

“Well, I’ll be pretty pissed if he ever allows anyone _else_ to touch me,” Dean snarled. “I'd definitely kick his ass for _that._ But, overall, no. I’m beyond caring about my personal dignity at this point. This is all about survival. The survival of both of us. I’m fully aware he’s in as much danger as I am. It’s not just the military thing. He could end up lynched if his rut rage causes him to attack a Beta girl. So I figure him mounting me would be the lesser of two evils, you know?

“So I just have to get out of this hospital, hopefully with all my bits still attached, and then Sam and I just have to muddle through until he’s eighteen. And yes, I know it is going to be hell on both of us, but we’ll get by, somehow. Maybe, if you hadn’t come, I wouldn’t have made it. I was, well, I admit I was starting to doubt whether I could possibly get through this shit at all. I’d lost faith, you know? I’d lost ‘hope’. But, whatever happens now, I’m going to survive it and I will make it across the border. Maybe a bit more battered and bloody than either of us likes but, well, life is shitty like that, isn’t it?”

“I can’t argue your position isn’t righteous,” Daniel sighed. “But, selfishly, I still find it personally intolerable. Is there nothing I can do for you?”

“Well, if the offer of some decent clothes is still on the table, I wouldn’t be averse,” Dean said, wryly.

Daniel did his best to smile in response, though his heart was breaking. “If I find a way to get both of you out of here safely, before Sam’s eighteen, I swear I’ll come back for you,” he promised.

“I know you want to,” Dean assured him. “But it’s okay if you can’t. Trust me. We’ll make it, regardless. Our mom raised us to fight, Daniel, not to give in. I’d forgotten that for a little while. Lost my way a bit. But I’m okay now. I swear it.”

Before Daniel could reply, the door to his room swung open with a bang and Becky Rosen strode in, face contorted with rage and her voice strident as she demanded, “What the hell is going on here? Who the hell do you think you are? How dare you interfere with my patient?”

In absolute fury, she reached for Daniel and wrenched viciously at his arm to haul him away from Dean’s bed.

Close on her heels, Dr Morgan came rushing in although his attention was clearly on her, not Dean nor Daniel. “Dr Rosen,” he protested, his expression horrified. “Let him go IMMEDIATELY. Don’t you realise who he is? Don’t you recognise him?” Dr Morgan then looked at Daniel. “I am SO sorry. Please, she doesn’t realise what she’s doing.”

Becky seemed to suddenly come to her senses, releasing Daniel so quickly that she inadvertently caught the back of his hand with a finger nail and nicked the skin. A tiny bead of blood rose to mark the minute wound and, seeing it, Dr Morgan visibly flinched.

“Owww,” Daniel drawled dryly.

The blood drained out of Dr Morgan’s face. “Oh shit,” he mumbled. “I swear, I tried to stop her.”

Daniel offered him a beatific smile. “I know you did,” he allowed. “We’ll just call you a ‘witness’, shall we?”

Morgan swallowed heavily, then eagerly nodded his agreement as though suddenly realising it was the safest way to avoid being charged as an accomplice.

Becky frowned petulantly at both of them, “Don’t be ridiculous. It was an accident. I barely scratched you,” she told Daniel. “And you had no business being in here anyway. How dare you interfere with Dean’s treatment. He’s at a delicate stage of…” She stopped abruptly, suddenly noticing the pegs on the floor. “What have you DONE?” she screeched. She crossed to Dean and pushed his chest roughly, rocking him back on the bed to expose his groin area. She blinked in confusion at his tightly closed Flores.

In that moment, aware only that she had barely three doses left of the pheromones and seeing, apparently, that nine days of careful work seemed to have been completely undone given that Dean’s Flores that had become so slack since being encouraged to expect regular greedy activity had, somehow, been returned to a state of virginal tightness, she was practically incandescent.

“What did you do to him, you bitch?”

Dr Morgan cringed, and rubbed his eyes as though unable to watch the car crash happening in front of him.

Dean, suddenly bright eyed for the first time in days, was as aware as Morgan of the significance of what had just happened. He was pretty sure that grabbing at Daniel had probably been offence enough without the fact she’d actually drawn blood but the fact she’d just driven a third nail in her coffin by calling Ophriel’s bride a ‘bitch’ was probably one of those three-strikes and you’re out kind of things. It suddenly appeared likely that his ‘therapy’ sessions would, at least, be coming to an abrupt close very shortly.

He wondered what form the ‘wrath of the Omadonna’ was going to take on Becky Rosen and realised, oddly, that his biggest regret over his decision not to leave with Daniel was that he wouldn’t witness that wrath taking place.

So he barely cared that Becky, seemingly still unaware her days were now numbered, was poking and prodding at his groin in bewildered irritation. Whilst her finger stabbing at his Flores was painful, he had become somewhat inured to feeling embarrassed by that kind of attention to a part of his body he’d been long since been forced to stop considering a ‘private’ place.

“What the hell did you do? His Flores was fully active and now it’s completely non responsive,” Becky snarled over her shoulder.

And that’s when Dean remembered what Dr Morgan had said in the lecture theatre about the dangers of an ‘active’ Flores.

And he wondered, idly, whether that was actually true.

And, it also occurred to him that it was kind of unfair, really, that Becky Rosen was going to be punished, presumably terribly, for the mere accidental scratch of her fingernail on Daniel’s hand, yet never face any consequences for what she had done to ‘him’.

And he wondered, idly, whether it was as easy to open a Flores as to close one.

And then, between one breath and the next, he willed it to happen.

Becky Rosen stabbed her index finger against Dean’s Flores, scratching it slightly with, incidentally, the same nail which had assaulted Daniel and in that instant, without any warning, Dean’s Flores sprang open, like a mouth, it’s inner label petals unfurling to snatch at the finger and clench it tightly.

She yelped in shock and tried to pull her hand back but the suctioning vacuum against her finger tip was too strong to fight. Her finger disappeared to the first knuckle, then the second and then, as though that had given the Flores sufficient purchase, she was yanked forwards as her whole hand was swallowed inside Dean’s vagina.

“LET GO OF ME,” she screamed.

Dean just stared at her innocently, as her wrist and lower arm were dragged inside him.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” she howled.

Dean shrugged. “I think I’m finally ‘embracing my designation’, “ he replied.

Her arm buried now past the elbow joint, Becky screamed as Dean’s internal muscles began to pulse against her flesh and, even despite her agonised cries, the sound of grinding, cracking, bones was unmistakeable.

Dean’s eyes met Daniel’s and they exchanged a look of understanding.

Dr Morgan, who had been frozen in horror, took two steps forwards, then paused in clear indecision. “What…what do I do?” he gasped.

It was Daniel who replied, still looking directly at Dean, as he shrugged and reminded the doctor of a universally accepted truth. “Release can’t be forced.”

By this time Becky’s screams were like the high-pitched howl of a trapped animal.

Dr Morgan shook himself, still looking shell-shocked, but rather less concerned than one might have expected for an esteemed colleague.

“I’d better go find a bone saw,” he finally decided and wandered off in search of one, and although one might have expected, in the circumstances, for him to move with urgency, he certainly did not appear to be moving with any great hurry.

 

 


	59. Chapter Fifty Five

“Shit,” Meg cursed, as the chirp of a particular individual ring tone identified she was receiving the phone call she’d been so eagerly awaiting - but at just the wrong moment. She grabbed the phone off the bedside table, snarling ‘Don’t stop,” at Benny as she did so.

She thought it was probably just as well she’d had the foresight to demand Benny’s company that evening since it was only the distraction of his face between her thighs that stopped her physically jumping up and punching the wall in frustrated fury.

Meg was convinced there was nothing that focused a girl’s attention quite so well on faking languid calm as being eaten out by an Alpha. There was, undoubtedly, nothing quite as guaranteed to enforce the need to remain in a physically relaxed posture as the particularly thrilling experience of having thirty two razor sharp Alpha fangs in such close proximity of their cunt.

Despite the waves of bitter disappointment and anger that battered her as she listened to Daniel, she managed to at least remain polite, understanding and even gently sympathetic to him as he explained what had gone down that evening and retained that supposed calmness not only up to the point the call ended but for the further few minutes it took for Benny’s clever tongue to lave enough satisfaction out of her to shudder through orgasmic release even despite her mental turmoil.

So it was only afterwards, as she lay there gasping for breath, her heart thudding in her chest and her cunt shuddering with the aftershocks, that she finally allowed the full gravity of the situation to hit her.

“Shit, bastard, FUCK,” Meg snarled, and slammed her cell phone back down on the bedside table.

“It take it it’s bad news?” Benny asked cautiously, raising his head, his lips wet with her juices, Although he’d barely heard Meg’s side of the conversation, with his ears muffled by Meg’s thighs, it had been increasingly obvious that she was not only angry but genuinely distressed by the call.

“That was Daniel,” she replied. “He didn’t manage to retrieve the Omegá."

“Crap,” Benny growled. “The Betas stopped him?”

Meg shook her head and laughed bitterly. “If only it was that simple. The Omegá refused to be rescued.”

“Huh?” Benny grunted in confusion. 

“We fucked up, Benny. No. let’s face it, I fucked up. I made a stupid assumption based on what I thought was going on instead of taking the time to check things out properly and now Dean is going to pay the price for my arrogance. We’re not going to get a second chance. There aren’t going to be any do-overs. By sending Daniel in, I’ve played my hand and now I’ve lost any advantage of surprise. No Pack member is going to be permitted to get within a mile of him from now on. “

“Well, if he didn’t want to come…”

Meg shook her head in negation. “It’s not that. I misunderstood the situation with the younger Alpha ‘brother’. I idiotically assumed Dean would welcome the chance to get away from him. It never once occurred to me that Dean might actually feel a sense of loyalty to his younger sibling, particularly now they’re orphans, and that was stupid hubris on my part. As Daniel just pointed out to me, Omegáres are created to be mothers, Benny. Their whole purpose is procreation so that naturally means the welfare of pups means absolutely everything to them. I’m so god-damned stupid. Of course the Omegá wasn’t going to be selfish enough to abandon a pup just to save themselves, even if that pup is a teen alpha brother who is probably the one he needs to be saved from the most.”

“I thought it was supposedly impossible that they’re actually related.”

“So? I wasn’t related to Joshua, but I still would have fought you to the death to protect him and I’m only a Beta,” Meg reminded him. “If I’d thought it through properly, we could have snatched the brother first. No one would have questioned a teen alpha choosing to just up and disappear. We should have done that first, stashed him away somewhere and returned to get the Omegá .”

Benny shrugged. “The government aren’t stupid. They’d have figured it out either way eventually and still demanded the return of the Alpha pup.”

“Yeah, but at least Dean would have been safely in Pack hands before that happened.”

Benny thought about it, then shook his head, “If Dean would rather stay in Beta hands than leave his brother, I highly doubt he’s the type to have stayed safely in Pack Land and just watched his brother being returned without him. If you think the Pack are going to be upset about him not getting here, just imagine the reaction if an Omegá got here safely and then decided he had no choice except to leave again. Everyone would go insane, particularly the Primáres.”

“I guess you're right, but I just wanted him safe, Benny. What they are doing to him is so fucked up.”

“Crowley showed me the video. That Rosen woman is crazy.”

“Well, that’s the one bit of good news. She attacked Daniel. Drew blood. Oh, and then called him a ‘bitch’ and the whole thing was independently witnessed.”

“HOLY SHIT!”

“And that’s not all,” Meg said, allowing a note of satisfaction to creep into her voice despite her eyes remaining dark with sorrow. “The stupid cow was apparently so distracted by her anger at Daniel’s presence that she then stuck her hand right into Dean’s active Flores and they had to amputate to release her.”

“Don’t know why they bothered operating to save her,” Benny growled. “I can’t see Ophriel letting the insult to Daniel go unaddressed anyway.”

“No,” Meg agreed. “Daniel called him whilst they were still operating and he sent his First Alphas to collect her for Pack trial before she’d even woken from the anaesthetic. So Rosen is already incarcerated in Pack Land. I don’t know whether to be pleased or pissed about that considering I wanted to deal with the bitch myself. Daniel has at least promised that if Ophriel’s sentence is anything less than actual execution, that he’ll send what’s left of her to me. I’m not holding out much hope though. Ophriel’s fury over the insult is going to be like a supernova exploding in South Dakota.”

~

David Rosen, Senator of the 18th district of Texas, which incidentally meant he was the senator of Houston which was one of the few cities that still was proudly running an Omegáren rut house in defiance of the Packs, was attempting to explode a supernova of his own.

It was, however, proving to be somewhat of a damp squid in the face of the opposition he was facing from the Lt Governor of Texas, Don Jackson, who, whilst, as an Ablest himself, was sympathetic to Rosen’s distress, had absolutely no stomach for becoming embroiled in the potentially financially ruinous idea of denying a Primá his legal right to demand redress for an insult against his Omegá.

“98% of the industry in Texas is Pack owned,” Jackson pointed out. 

It was undeniably true. The four main business enterprises of cattle, timber, cotton and oil were all completely dependent on land and that land belonged to the Packs. No-one in Texas was going to support the idea of attempting to apply pressure against Ophriel’s Pack for fear that the Texan Packs would side with him and punish the Texan betas for interference. The fact that Ophriel’s Pack was under Castiel Cainson’s governance only added to the general disquiet at any idea of interfereing.

“It’s just a fucking Omegá,” Rosen snapped. “She barely touched it and, anyway, it had no business being in the hospital in the first place. It was trespassing. Look what it did to her. If it hadn’t been there, distracting her, she wouldn’t have lost her arm. Why isn’t anyone punishing it?”

Fortunately, possibly, for Dean, nobody, including David Rosen, was giving even the least amount of attention to the fact it was his Flores that had crushed Becky’s arm beyond repair. Because everyone ‘knew’ that was the inevitable consequence of touching an active Flores, all attention was being focused on why it had happened rather than how it had happened and so the finger of blame was being firmly placed on Daniel’s shoulders.

It was the fact those shoulders were, apparently, untouchable that was driving Rosen’s fury to incandescent levels.

“The Omegá broke no laws,” Jackson replied. “Besides, even if it had, an Omegá can’t be held legally accountable for anything they do. The Packs consider they ‘can do no wrong’ and in Beta Law they aren’t considered human enough to be subject to legal redress anyway. Prosecuting an Omegá for trespass would be about as successful as trying to put a neighbour’s dog on trial for pissing on your lawn. It’s an animal, Rosen. You know that as well as I do.”

“That’s exactly my point, Jackson. My Becky is facing a possible death sentence for touching a fucking animal just because it belongs to another fucking animal! Can’t you see for yourself how insane that is?”

“Look David, let’s face the truth here. Your daughter is lost. She is, sadly, just another victim in this war and the only thing we can do for her is make sure her sacrifice isn’t in vain. Stop beating your head pointlessly against the wall. You’re just wasting time and energy on a battle you can’t win. The Packs have Becky, you can’t get her back. That’s the end of it. What you can do is concentrate on the plan endorsed by our Church. If we’re successful, ten years from now there won’t even be any Packs, David. That’s what you’ve got to concentrate on. Up until now, your support of the church has been half-hearted at best. You’ve been so dismissive of the Packs as being ‘just a bunch of animals’ that you haven’t really openly supported our efforts. Well, sadly, now you can see for yourself that the lesser designations can’t just be ‘tolerated’ and dismissed as insignificant but unavoidable. They are a problem that has to be addressed head on.”

David Rosen’s flushed face twisted into an expression of righteous vengeance and newly minted religious fervour. “You’re right,” he agreed, his eyes gleaming with promises of retribution. “It’s time we finished this, once and for all.”

~

Although Castiel had not felt personally invested in the success of Daniel’s attempt to retrieve the Omegá, he found himself almost as distressed as his wife to learn that it had ended in failure.

On one level he understood and even respected the Omegá's decision to remain in Beta Land but, even though he had sincerely doubted his own desire of wanting the Omegá to choose him as a mate, he only realised he must have secretly been holding at least some subconscious hope the Omegá had somehow been his ‘one', contrary to expectation, because he felt an acute sense of personal disappointment even beyond his natural distress that any Omegá was voluntarily remaining in Beta hands.

His feeling of nausea wasn’t helped by the worry that given the Omegá's reputedly unusual appearance, the added inevitability he would end up deflowered and docked at the very least before his eventual arrival in Pack Land would mean no Primá might be interested in offering Dean a bride-price at all.

It seemed that it was going to be another ‘Claire’ situation and, selfishly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to end up having to do his duty yet again.

It was rather painful for him, already, that he had a son he’d never met. He didn’t relish the idea of yet another broken mating bond and yet another pup being raised in his mother’s Pack Lands.

Always assuming Chuck would be willing to accept yet another one of Castiel’s discarded temporary mates.

He said as much to his wife, quietly, as they sat in the dining room of Pack Hall that evening. The topic of conversation on everyone’s lips was the Sioux Fall’s Omegá and the subject of how Ophriel might choose to deal with the ‘assault’ on Daniel. And, inevitably, there was a lot of speculation over what would happen to Dean when he did eventually arrive in Pack Land. 

“It’s not that I don’t understand I have a duty, as a Grandé, to offer the mercy of a mating bite and a pup to any Omegá in need,” he muttered, “but it isn’t really fair on me, is it? Having to deal with the Omegáres no one else wants.”

“You unbelievable ASSHOLE,” she snarled, jumping to her feet in fury, hands on her hips and eyes flashing fire.

Castiel blinked at her in astonishment and not a little offence. “I am your husband. You should show me some respect,” he admonished.

“I should show you my foot up your ASS,” she snarled.

Castiel shook his head in genuine puzzlement at her anger. “I honestly don’t understand why you are angry with me,” he admitted. “I said I would do my duty by Dean, if it proves necessary to do so. No Omegá will ever suffer the indignity of complete rejection in my Pack Lands. I was raised to respect every single representation of the Omadonna, regardless of their appearance or situation. No matter the consequences of Dean’s decision, he will be offered all the Pack’s resources when he arrives and none will ever offer him any disrespect but I cannot actually force a Primá to mate with him. I can only ensure that if the situation should occur, that Dean still definitely receives a mating bite if he so desires.”

“Gaggh,” Meg spat, too furious to even find a suitable curse word. “I blame your mother for this. I think I need to shove a foot up CHUCK’S ass, too.”

Castiel’s eyes widened in astonishment.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Meg continued, “Your pompous fucktard attitude probably comes primarily from Cain but I blame Chuck involving you in the Claire situation for your current level of assholery. You Primáres are all the same. You pretend to worship Omagáres but, really, it’s all about you, isn’t it? What you want, CP. What you Primáres think an Omegá should be. What you all think YOU deserve. Well, I’m telling you now that what you, and every other Primá deserves is diddly-squat. It would serve you all right if every damned Omegá turned around and said that YOU aren’t suitable mates for them. Because, looking at you right now, I’ve got to say you make me pretty damned unhappy to be your wife myself!”

“Ooops,” Crowley drawled, as Meg turned and stormed out of the room. “Doesn’t look like you’ll be getting any of that for a while.”

Benny and Victor rose to their feet. “We’ll, um, go and check she’s okay, boss,” Benny mumbled, unable to meet Castiel’s eyes.

One by one, all the other senior pack members in the hall made their excuses and crept off, leaving him alone to consider his wife’s words in the privacy of an empty room

~

Azazel sat in the room the hospital administration had provided for the meeting and kept his expression carefully neutral as the three lawyers argued in front of him. He was less interested in the lawyers representing the Hospital and the local government than the Cain-Crowley lawyer who was representing Ophriel’s sudden interest in Dean. The Pack lawyer, strictly speaking, had no business in the meeting at all but the Hospital were running too scared of suffering consequences as the employers of Becky Rosen to refuse Ophriel’s demand to include him in the discussion.

The Pack Lawyer, a middle-aged Beta man, was being careful not to indicate any particular interest in Dean himself other than the fact that he ‘was’ an Omegá who had accidentally become embroiled in the drama. Azazel sympathised with the lawyer’s position in this. It probably went against every instinct of a pack member, even one born Beta, to not jump wholeheartedly to Dean’s defence but it was a delicate situation and Dean’s safety in Beta Land depended on no one acknowledging any special interest in him.

Still, it would have looked equally suspicious if the Pack had shown no interest at all. So the lawyer was treading carefully, navigating between the self-interest of the other parties without revealing his own hand.

It took several hours for a mutually accepted agreement to be done.

The local government would allow Dean to be ratified as Sam’s guardian. The hospital would sign paperwork to agree Dean’s mental capacity to accept the responsibility. The Pack would agree that their demands for retribution would be restricted solely to Becky Rosen and Dean would be released into Azazel’s care and Sam’s guardianship.

The only sticking point had been the hospital and local government being inflexible about the need to comply with the law regarding the docking of Omagáres before Dean was actually released from the hospital. The Cain-Crowley lawyer had overplayed his hand at that point by offering a written guarantee of a future minimum $10m bride-price for the Omegá if he wasn’t mutilated in any fashion. The lawyer hadn’t even attempted to stipulate Dean’s virginity. By placing him into Sam’s ownership there wasn’t anyone in that room who had any expectation of Dean surviving three years as a virgin but the issue of docking was definitely a real issue to the lawyer, which meant it was evidently a real problem for the Packs. Azazel thought it was probably counter-productive for the lawyer to make that point so obvious.

Indeed, the hospital lawyer dug his feet in further the more the Pack lawyer argued.

“It’s the law that it has to be done,” the hospital lawyer insisted. “And since he’s already in this hospital, it would be ludicrous to release him without the procedure taking place. The Alpha guardian has already signed all the permissions for the hospital to perform any necessary health related procedures and, according to the Department of Public Health, docking is a necessary medical procedure.”

“I highly doubt Sam signed that permission with any understanding you would abuse it in such fashion,” Azazel pointed out, his tone neutral. “I would like to go on formal record as protesting most vehemently.”

“You don’t sound very vehement to me,” the Pack lawyer snarled.

Azazel just shrugged. He had absolutely no interest in stopping the procedure. He simply wanted written evidence of his ‘protest’ in case Sam reacted badly. 

“It’s a quick snip, nip and tuck under local anaesthetic,” the Hospital lawyer pointed out. “It isn’t a major operation like, say, an amputation.”

And there was the nub of the matter, Azazel understood and, from the look on the Pack lawyer’s face, he too reached the same conclusion.

However the hospital wanted to couch it, the truth was the hospital wanted to exact some revenge either for what Dean had done to Becky Rosen or for whatever Ophriel chose to do with what remained of her.

“I suppose, like you say, it is the law,” Azazel sighed.

And with three of them in agreement, the Pack lawyer reluctantly was forced to acquiesce.

~

Of all of Cain’s sons, Castiel had always been the one more inclined to navel-gazing self-contemplation than his brothers.

Even so, it had taken a few days (well, actually a whole week) of self-righteous sulking and being physically barred from entrance from his own bedchamber by his own damned traitorous First Alphas on the behest of his wife before Castiel had given in to the nagging growing suspicion that maybe Meg was right to be angry with him.

Castiel had been so lost in his childish fantasy of meeting his ‘perfect’ Omegá that it had simply never occurred to him that by demanding ‘perfect’ he was inadvertantly dismissing all other Omagáres as being ‘less than perfect’.

And Meg was right.

That was an unbelievably arrogant position to take and did, indeed, show an unforgivable amount of disrespect to any of that designation. It was, surely, an act of offence to the Omadonna himself to display such hubris.

As a Prima he should be grateful if any Omegá deigned to look at him twice, let alone consent to mate with him.

He’d made a terrible mistake with Claire, by severing the mating bond just because she was mentally ill. What unforgivable arrogance of him to believe that made her in any way ‘unworthy’ of him. Meg was right that he should have been on his knees, kissing Claire’s feet in gratitude for her allowing him to touch her at all. Omegáres weren’t put on the earth to please Primáres. A Primá was duty bound to please an Omegá. Any Omegá . Rejecting Claire as ‘unsuitable’ had been an act of sheer assholery. His son, Alexiel, was being raised outside of Castiel’s Pack Lands simply because of his own stupidity and false pride. If he had accepted Claire as his Bride, his son would be at his side not half way across the country.

It made him no better than his uncle Lucifer who was now on his third Bride, having now ‘retired’ Ravan also now that he had borne twelve pups to Lucifer before becoming barren like his predecessor.

It was too late to change his mind over Claire, A broken bond couldn’t be restored. He could, however, get his head out of his ass about what made an Omegá suitable to be a bride in the first place.

The truth was, surely, that simply being an Omegá was qualification enough.

From this moment forth, he decided, that would not only be his attitude to an Omegá bride but he would take a damned horse-whip to any of his Primáres who ever dared turn their noses from an ‘unsuitable’ Omegá themselves. There was no longer going to be any talk of Omagáres being ‘spoiled’ or ‘ruined’ by Beta actions. No Omegá , henceforth, would be judged by what they had survived except to be seen as stronger and better and MORE noble because of their suffering. It didn’t matter what the Omegá looked like. An Omegá by definition was perfection in motion and it wasn’t for him or any other Primá to criticise by what physical form that perfection was displayed.

Filled with his new understanding, he returned to his bedchamber and, extremely humbly this time, asked Victor whether he might request a moment of Meg’s time. The Alpha was impressed enough by Castiel’s change of attitude to intercede for him enough that Meg did, finally, unbend enough to allow him access to their bedroom.

She was flushed and naked, her body bruised and dishevelled with the evidence she had been working out most of her frustrations on the bodies of his First Alphas. Both Benny and Crowley, also naked, were looking a lot more worse for wear than she was. Particularly Crowley but then Castiel was well aware Meg’s favourite ‘angry sex’ position was on the bottom of a Crowley sandwich, so the small Alpha was presumably getting pounded from both sides.

“You have exactly two minutes CP before I get Benny to throw you out on your ass, so make good use of it,” Meg snarled unforgivingly, her pretty face still fixed in a mask of utter disgust as she looked at him.

Unhesitatingly, Castiel dropped to his knees in front of her and, in a deliberate echo of the conclave, he pressed his lips against her mound in the same worshipful kiss as a Primá offered to the altar of an Omegá. She smelt of sex and sweat and Alpha and, embarrassingly, Castiel suddenly felt so lonely he wanted to cry. What if she really didn’t want to be his wife anymore?

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled into her crotch. 

“Sorry for what?” she demanded, her voice still cold with anger.

“For…for being an asshole,” he admitted miserably.

“An arrogant asshole,” she corrected, though her voice had softened slightly.

“An arrogant, stupid, asshole,” he agreed. “Please don’t give up on me. Don’t leave me.”

Meg dropped to own knees and folded her arms around him. “You stupid idiot,” she chided softly. “I love you, CP, and I’ll never leave you. But I can’t tolerate this whole Pack bullshit hypocrisy. You all pretend to be so much better than the Betas but, in your own way, you treat Omegáres just as badly. I admit it was probably my own guilt over Dean that made me so mad about what you said but, truth is, it does suck donkeys that Primáres have the audacity to judge an Omegá for being a victim of abuse. It’s pretty damned disgusting, really.”

“I know,” Castiel agreed. “But it’s more than that, honestly, well for me anyway. I just…just wanted to have an Omegá bride who really loved me. Not one so programmed to expect sex that they just saw me as an available cock.”

Meg blinked with astonishment. “Really? Wow. I admit that isn’t actually as unforgivable. I thought all the Primá bullshit about virgin wives was some kind of territorial crap of not wanting anyone else to have already tasted the goods. I thought it was based purely in arrogance but, truth is, its more about your own insecurity. And that’s actually a bit sad, CP.”

“It’s still arrogance,” Castiel confessed. “It’s still a case of me putting my needs in front of those of an Omegá . I ought to be grateful to accept any Omegá .”

“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” she said. “I’m not asking you to marry just any Omegá . You have the same right as anyone to express personal taste, CP. It just sickened me that someone as lovely as Dean would get rejected by you, sight unseen, just because you ‘think’ he doesn’t fit some preconceived idea of how you think he should look like. And then, on top of that, you add that even if he is to your taste you’d then turn away from him simply because he’s been a victim of abuse. All I’m asking is that you drop some of your prejudices and deal with him as though he is a real person, not some kind of mythical fantasy.”

“I know. You’re right. It’s a shitty way to deal with Omagáres and one I promise won’t continue.”

“Don’t ever make me so mad with you again. You broke my heart this week.”

“I think you broke my Alphas this week,” he muttered grumpily.

“She’s definitely broken me,” Crowley mumbled. “And I think Benny’s definitely overdue for a bit of Primá attention, given his enthusiasm for the task.”

“I think, considering the three of you have spent the week in my wife’s bedroom, you all are due a bit of personal Primá attention,” Castiel promised with a low growl.

“See,” Crowley complained. “That’s exactly why victim blaming is unfair. Meg and Benny treat me like a sex toy and then you punish me for getting abused by them, Where’s the fairness in that?”

“The door’s that way,” Castiel pointed out, as he unfastened his pants. “Feel free to use it.”

Crowley sniffed, ”So now you’re rejecting me? Charming.”

Meg rolled her eyes. “Just shut up and bend over, Crowley, before you really DO talk him out of it. I don’t need you sulking for the next week that you’ve been demoted to Second Alpha.”

~

Three weeks later, Meg received delivery of a small ventilated crate.

It was rolled into the dining hall on castors as she and the rest of the senior Pack members were eating with Castiel.

“It’s a gift from Daniel,” Crowley announced, reading the delivery paperwork.

“Ooohh,” Meg grinned. “I wondered if he’d be able to keep his promise. Bless him. I must remember to send him some flowers in the morning.”

“He particularly enjoys Dahlias, apparently,” someone helpfully announced.

“I’ll arrange it,” Crowley promised.

Meg gestured impatiently for the crate to be opened. Victor and one of the second Alphas, Rohan, prised the wooden sides off to reveal a small puppy transport cage.

“Oh, look, CP. Daniel’s sent me my very own puppy,” Meg squealed with exagerated glee.

Castiel looked at the contents of the puppy cage and his lip curled slightly. “I hope it doesn’t pee on the carpet.”

Crowley opened the top of the cage, lifted the ‘puppy’s’ luxurious horse hair tail and checked its other two holes. “It’s okay, boss. Its fully plugged. The carpet’s safe. Given the size of all three plugs, I can’t see any accidents happening.”

“Get it out then,” Castiel suggested. “Let Meg see it properly.”

Crowley attached a choke chain around the puppy’s neck and dragged it out of the cage. It whimpered as it stumbled forwards, its four short, equal length stumps still tender and unused to attempting a four legged gait.

“Oh, it is SO pretty,” Meg smirked. “I particularly like its face. The gag actually gives it a perfect doggy profile, oh, and look, it’s surgically attached, not a mask. That’s so…permanent.”

“That’s a seriously nice touch,” Benny agreed. “I guess you feed it down the little hole in the middle of the muzzle?”

“There’s a little care package,” Crowley advised. “Let’s see. Feeding tube. Collars. Ooohhh, clawed nipple clamps with bells on. That’ll be a nice touch when you play ‘fetch’ with it. Ah, and a selection of different tails, all with huge ridged plugs to hold them nicely in place. Poetic.”

“Gosh, I imagine with a little care, it could live for years and years,” Meg purred. “At least long enough for Dean to meet it. Won’t that be an enjoyable reunion? Make sure that’s a huge bunch of flowers, Crowley. Daniel is so sweet. Until this moment I had absolutely no idea how much I needed a little bitch-puppy to play with.”


	60. Chapter Fifty Six

Dr Paul Morgan, soon-to-be former, employee of Sioux Falls General, was not expecting any visitors that evening, so the doorbell ringing was a surprise. Not as much of a surprise as the identity of his uninvited guest, though.

His first instinctive reaction was fear. Panic surged through him as he wondered whether it had been his inability to act to stop Becky Rosen or his even worse inability to prevent Dean’s docking that had brought Daniel to his door.

But the Omegá, though flanked by two of the largest Alphas that Morgan had ever seen, had a calm, unthreatening smile on his face and when he asked for admittance he did so in a polite, undemanding tone and Morgan’s hammering heart dared to slow a little as he perceived that the visit was not _necessarily_ an indication that he was being hauled in front of a Pack Land court.

“Of course,” he said, stumbling backwards, eyes still warily fixed on the unsmiling Alphas rather than the delicate beauty of the Omegá queen.  “Do come in. Sit down. Um.. can I get you anything… um a drink or… um…”

“Do not fear me,” Daniel said, quietly. “I have come to request a favour, not to demand retribution.”

There was a part of Morgan that wanted to bite out that he had already done enough damned favors for Omegáres to last a lifetime but he bit his tongue and left the words unsaid because, honestly, though he regretted the position he’d found himself in, he did not actually regret the decisions he’d made to get there.

“If it’s in my power,” he agreed instead.

Daniel nodded his acceptance of the qualified agreement.

“It is a small matter,” he said, “but a little delicate in nature.  I have brought some gifts for Dean and would be grateful if you would ensure he receives them before he leaves the hospital. I feel it would be easier for the brother to allow them, if they are already in place before he collects Dean.”

Morgan raised an eyebrow questioningly.

“Firstly, I have brought some more suitable attire. I understand Dean will be constrained by the Beta Laws that require his genital areas to be on display at all times.  Although you can see for yourself that in the packs we Omegáres have few objections to our human form being on display; we reveal our bodies to revel in our beauty.  We do not do so to be subjected to mockery and shame.  So I was appalled by the manner in which he was dressed when I visited. The outfit he was wearing did not glorify his beauty; it deliberately cheapened and demeaned it.”

“I agree his clothing displays a particularly poor level of taste,” Morgan replied. “But the fault does not lie purely with the Hospital. As orphans, neither of the pups have had much leeway over fashion choices regardless of their individual designations. They have both been obliged to wear whatever the state has seen fit to provide.”

Daniel sneered his understanding of the point, then said, “My understanding, having consulted with our Pack Lawyers, is that as long as Dean’s genital areas are visible to the eye, they do not have to be ‘naked’ as such. Therefore, I have provided a half-dozen gowns of the style I myself prefer. They have been made especially for him by my own designers, to accommodate his unusual height, and they were most _horrendously_ expensive.  I stress that point for one reason only.  The Pack that owns the land upon which every building in Sioux Falls is built, would be most insulted if such a _costly_ charitable gift of their Omegá Queen to a poor, unfortunate orphan were rejected. Perhaps you would stress to your colleagues that the Hospital depends upon Pack goodwill. I am led to understand that the buildings themselves are heavily mortgaged and, naturally, those mortgages are also Pack-owned. It would be truly unfortunate if an insult to the generosity of my nature were the cause of some less-generous responses by those who hold the mortgages of the Hospital.”

Morgan grinned widely. “You don’t dick around, do you?”

“I find, particularly in my interactions with Free Beta officialdom, that it is always more productive to cut to the chase,” Daniel agreed.

“You said firstly,” Morgan reminded him.

Daniel nodded. “I understand there have been certain issues delaying Dean’s release from the hospital.”

“I’m not even going to bother asking how you know that,” Morgan replied, “but yes. He is proving extremely problematic since the docking though it’s assumed to be an involuntary physical reaction so I assure you that everyone is handling him with extreme patience.”

“Assumed?” Daniel questioned carefully.

Morgan shrugged slightly. “I don’t _know_ and I can’t _prove_ it and I don’t even _want_ to prove it, but I personally think he’s somehow doing it on purpose. In fact, I’m beginning to suspect that what happened to Dr Rosen wasn’t an accident either.”

Daniel froze.

“But, that’s fine,” Morgan continued casually. “Maybe if I hadn’t met _you_ I’d feel differently about it but I just don’t understand how anyone could meet an Omegá such as yourself and not see _all_ Omegáres differently.  Take Free Born Betas out of the equation and Omegáres are _clearly_ perfectly ordinary people. Oh, not that I’m saying you’re ‘ordinary’, Daniel, but I mean…”

“I know what you mean,” Daniel assured him, with an approving smile.

“Anyway, although I figure Dean is doing it on purpose, no one else suspects it. They’re all putting it down to some weird physiological reaction to the docking operation. In fact, secretly, they are suspecting some kind of nerve damage but it’s not something they dare openly admit to, for fear of getting charged with inadvertent Omegá abuse. But they aren’t happy with the idea of just using a number one peg so they wanted to revert to the idea of Omegá seating but Sam Winchester has gone pretty crazy over the docking being done at all, so he’s put his foot down over the seating and it’s all a bit of a shit storm. Dean isn’t getting released whilst the argument continues and since _he’s_ completely pissed with his brother, Sioux Falls is definitely not a fun place to have a residency at the moment.  Makes me pretty okay with being canned, except for the issue of not being sure what to do next.  My wife and pups need a roof over their heads.”

“I’m sorry you lost your job, Dr Morgan,” Daniel said.

Morgan huffed quietly.  “I haven’t been _fired._ Just encouraged most enthusiastically to _choose_ to leave. I was already on shaky ground by standing witness against Dr Rosen.  Refusing to perform Dean’s operation myself was the end of my career in Sioux Falls. Maybe the end of my career altogether since the Department of Public Health are now threatening to report me to the AGMC for malpractice. I think it’s possibly time for me to take my family and get out of America altogether.”

“There would be a place for all of you in Pack Land here, should you wish,” Daniel offered.

An offer like that wasn’t a minor concession, particularly to a Beta family, and Morgan appreciated the kindness of the intent, even though he smiled wryly and said, “I appreciate the offer but, frankly, I’m not sure it would be an improvement overall. I’m well aware of the types of medical procedures used as correction by Pack Law. Whilst I don’t deny they provide a certain amount of karmic justice, I couldn’t personally condone them. I don’t pretend to necessarily be a ‘good’ man but I do wholeheartedly agree with the principle of ‘Do no harm’.  Sadly, that position is an unwelcome one these days in _all_ of the American lands. I’m thinking, perhaps, it’s time to take my family and leave altogether. Maybe Europe would suit me better.”

“A storm is brewing that will change the face of the world,” Daniel said, his eyes abruptly blazing gold.  “I suggest you consider Norway as your optimal destination. It will be one of the few places where your family may survive what is to come.”

Morgan shivered to witness the auric glow. Though he’d heard rumors that an Omegá could emit a gold light from their eyes, just as Alpha eyes blazed red in high passion, he had never seen it with his own eyes before and, seeing it, he understood why it was reputedly linked with myth and mysticism. Alpha phosphorescence, although startling, was evocative of primal fears, of emotions animalistic and base. Omegáren bioluminescence spoke to a far more spiritual part of Morgan’s soul, the place where belief in the divine seemed possible.

And though Morgan’s conscious, scientific mind rejected any credence in deific beings, Daniel unsettled him enough that he decided that relocating to Norway might, indeed, be a good move for his family.

~

“What is it?” Dean demanded, frowning at the odd contraption.

“It’s apparently called a ‘bridle’,” Dr Morgan told him.  “According to Daniel, it’s what a lot of the Omegáres in Pack Land prefer to wear. It’s totally discrete when fitted. There’s just an extremely fine gold harness, almost like jewellery, that wraps around your waist and secures it in place front and back. The curved moon shape is deliberate, because rather than having two separate plugs, the ridged end inserts into your vagina, the smooth into your rectal passage and the connecting section lies flush along the length of your Flores to conceal its entire opening from view. It effectively looks to external eyes as though your whole groin area is simply concealed by a fine metal plate. It isn’t even obvious that you are pegged behind the plate. That’s the _real_ purpose of the harness, really. To create the illusion you need the chains to hold a simple metal plate to conceal your Flores from uninvited view.

“Daniel asked me to tell you that Pack Omegáres have worn bridles for the entirety of written history before falling out of favour because people believed they were intended as chastity belts imposed by Primáres to prevent penetration of their Brides by rivals. He wanted me to stress, however, that Bridles are, and always have been, simply worn as a matter of personal choice by Omegáres,” Dr Morgan flushed slightly. “He said that _this_ bridle is a replica of the precise model of bridle that Chuck Sethson likes to wear underneath his Beta clothing.”

“It’s a little larger than a number one peg,” Dean said, thoughtfully, “But not much and the angles are going to be a little different than individual pegs. But…but this means it _isn’t_ weird that I really _like_ having the number one peg inside me, doesn’t it?”

It had been a source of worry and self-doubt to Dean that although he vehemently protested the insertion of the larger pegs inside himself, feeling ‘raped’ by their effect of causing him to orgasm uncontrollably, the smallest of the pegs, which just created a low level buzz of constant pleasure, was something he actually _enjoyed_ wearing.

Dr Morgan nodded firmly. “Daniel described the sensation of being ‘lightly’ pegged as like being ‘hugged from the inside’.”

Dean grinned his relieved agreement. “Yeah, that’s exactly it. I never really felt it before, the _constant_ emptiness I mean, but since the…well, since the big peg, I just haven’t felt okay without _something_ inside me. And the little peg is enough, you know? Just enough to take the edge off but those bastards keep making me wear the bigger ones and that’s fucked up. I’d like to see _them_ try to walk with a tree trunk rammed up their cunts!”

Dr Morgan chuckled. “You’ve been driving them crazy,” he said. “They spend the best part of forty minutes spanking you to get the thing inside and the minute they release you it just shoots straight back out again. Anyone might think you do it on purpose.”

Dean’s eyes widened in fear.

Morgan winked at him. “Obviously, that would be an absolutely _ludicrous_ suggestion since everybody knows release…”

“…can’t be forced,” Dean finished, with a nervous grin.

“Exactly,” Morgan agreed. “Well, the good news is that the Hospital are tired of dealing with you, so they and the schoolboard have decided Daniel’s gift is an acceptable solution to the problem. As long as you are willing to wear it, and Daniel promises it will be something you _will_ enjoy wearing, you can go home tomorrow. Wearing the bridle and a gown, you’re going to look extremely exotic, Dean, but I promise you won’t look ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” Dean agreed, thoughtfully. “It’s not great but it’s far better than trying to stagger down the road in a clown outfit with a number four peg shoved into my guts. And…and I guess even though the gown is so sheer its practically transparent, the way the material shifts and drapes around me tricks the eye into doubting what it’s seeing. It won’t be absolutely obvious that I’ve…I’ve been…been…”

“I promise it’s not _obvious_ ,” Dr Morgan assured him. “Because your genitals were small and discrete anyway, your mound is not evidently so different now that it would jump out at people as long as you wear one of the gowns to distract the eye rather than display it totally naked.”

Dean sniffed angrily. “You’re saying my bits were so small it doesn’t make much difference anyway?” he challenged.

Morgan shook his head sadly. “Of course it makes a difference. What they’ve done to you is an obscenity. Any unnecessary medical procedure performed against a patient’s will is a damnable offence and the surgeon who performed it needs his goddamned own balls cut off. I suspect, given Daniel’s outrage over what’s happened, that Dr Farrell is eventually going to end up sincerely wishing he had made the same decision I did. Trust me, Dean. An accounting ledger is already being kept for you by the Packs. Everyone who raises a finger against you is being named into that ledger and one day each and every one of those people will be held to account.”

“I hope _you_ aren’t on that ledger,” Dean said, sincerely. “Even that day in the lecture theatre, I _know_ you tried to help me.”

“I didn’t help you enough,” Dr Morgan admitted, his expression shamed. “I only now understand just how remiss I was. At that point I still thought of you as, well, somewhat sub-human. The only reason I tried to be kind to you was the same reason I feed stray animals instead of kicking them. I just never held with cruelty to _any_ living creature. Now I know just how fucking wrong I was not to see you as a true human being, I want to put my name in your ‘ledger’ myself. I don’t understand why either you _or_ Daniel are being so… so forgiving of me. I half suspect that when my usefulness is over, someone _will_ come knocking on my door to hold me to account.”

Dean shook his head. “It’s over. You fucked up. You wised up. You apologised. We forgive you. That’s all there is. I’ll go insane if I can’t learn to let some stuff go, Dr Morgan. Tomorrow morning I’ve somehow got to look at Sam and not actually punch him in the face for this utter fucked-up bullshit.”

“He honestly wasn’t told about the intention to dock you,” Morgan assured him.

“I know. I believe you,” Dean agreed. “But he still, stupidly, signed the consent form that allowed it to happen.”

“He signed a general medical consent, that’s all. He didn’t know it would be abused.”

Dean blinked slowly, then shrugged. “He should have known. He’s just a fifteen year old pup who _shouldn’t_ have to second guess every decision he makes in case someone uses his actions against me,” Dean admitted. “But the fact remains that if he wants to be my ‘Guardian’ he needs to step up to the plate and start actually fucking _guarding_ me.”

Dr Morgan nodded his agreement.

“Still, he fucked up and if he wises up and apologises and does a bit fucking better in future I _will_ forgive him,” Dean promised.

“And if he doesn’t? If he keeps ‘fucking up’?” Dr Morgan asked carefully.

“I don’t know,” Dean admitted. “I want to say I’d forgive him anything. I _used_ to think I would. But now, not so much.  Waking up like this two weeks ago, knowing what had happened, what Sam had _allowed_ to happen… well, I’m struggling with it, you know? That’s why I’ve refused to have him visit. I needed to get my head straight.”

“And have you?”

Dean shrugged. “I’ve run out of time anyway. Tomorrow is the day I go home. Well, to Azazel’s home, apparently. And that bothers me. I can’t put my finger on it but there’s something really hicky about Azazel and it troubles me that he’s gotten his claws into Sam.  I have this feeling that even with Dr Rosen out of the picture, things are still going to go south because of Azazel. But, like I said, it’s just an instinctive thing. Azazel’s never stepped out of line in front of me, so I don’t know. He even apparently ‘vehemently protested’ my docking. It’s in the formal record. So I don’t know what it is about him but, it’s a gut thing, you know?”

Dr Morgan nodded his understanding.

“It’s my last day at the hospital tomorrow too,” he said, “So I’ll probably never see you again, Dean.  I need to find another job, somewhere my family will be safe. But I have the distinct impression that Daniel will be keeping an eye on you, one way or the other.  He’ll do everything he can to protect you. I just worry it won’t be enough. I’m actually finding it difficult to just walk away myself.”

“Daniel will do his best. That’s all anyone can do. I already told him it wasn’t his job to save me. I’m telling _you_ the same thing. You’ve done enough, Dr Morgan. I am not ungrateful. Let it go and get on with your own life now. Go find somewhere you will be happy and safe.”

His eyes flared gold.

“I hear Norway is nice this time of year.”

~


	61. Chapter Fifty Seven

Dean wasn't sure whether it was because of the quick, successful fitting of the bridle or, more likely, the fact Sam and Azazel would be collecting him from the hospital the following day, but the gynaecological bed was completely removed from his room and exchanged for standard furniture once more. Even the television was replaced on the wall to recreate the illusion that Dean had _always_ been considered a real human patient rather than a laboratory animal to be experimented on.

After the orderlies had left him alone, sitting in a comfortable side chair in a perfectly _normal_ hospital room, wearing one of Daniel's stunning gowns in a teal blue, which despite being more sheer than a negligée  was so evidently designer quality that it actually somehow managed to make him feel a little _over_ -dressed rather than feel still barely more than naked, with the low roiling pleasure thrumming inside him from the bridle, he actually felt like a real human being for the first time in weeks and so, in the privacy of his room, without any witnesses, he finally gave in to tears.

Somehow, whilst he had been treated like little more than an animal, naked and abused and permanently left on open display so anyone could stand and gawp at his exposed Flores, it had been easier to retain enough fury to keep his sorrow buried under a snarling mask of defiant rage.

But oddly, Dr Morgan's visit, where the doctor had taken the time to talk to him like a real person, had hit him hard, crumbling the walls he had built so carefully to protect himself. 

It hadn't just been the doctor's unexpected kindness that had undone him, it had been Daniel's gifts. The fact the Omegá queen had cared enough to keep his promise over the clothing was surprising enough but the bridle had been a complete and welcome revelation. Still, what had really hurt had been that even as he'd clutched the silken robes to his chest, hugging them close to his heart in gratitude, all he could think of was his mother and the far cheaper but equally loving gift of an Omegá robe for that Shab-E Yarma celebration, a little less than a year and a half earlier. 

Her present by necessity hadn't been a handmade designer gown spun from priceless silk and, actually, now that he was wearing the real thing its contrast with the cheap rayon fake purchased by his mother was glaringly obvious. But that wasn't the point. It was still a hurtful reminder of a special time when his life, though fraught with danger even then, still was filled with the love of good people.

He'd abruptly realised that not once in the days since waking to find he'd been drugged and mutilated in his sleep (and he still wasn't sure why that actually felt even more of a violation than being dragged off, kicking and screaming his protest, in full awareness of the procedure to come) had he even _thought_ about his mother. He'd been too filled with rage and fury over what he perceived as Sam's betrayal, even though he knew that feeling that way was unfair when Sam had only made a _mistake_. Still, obviously, when Sam fucked up he didn't do it in half-measures and what really pissed Dean off was the absolute knowledge that by the time Sam had finished doing his typical whole puppy-eyed apology routine, somehow it would end up with Dean apologising to _him_ for being mean enough to make Sam feel bad about himself. 

So Dean felt guilty about forgetting his grief, and guilty about being mad at Sam and guilty at the knowledge he would let Sam off the hook and guilty about... well, he just felt guilty, really.

And in the wake of all that unfortunate self-reflection, the bastard Hospital administration had taken it upon themselves to abruptly restore at least an _illusion_ of dignity to him. 

The restoration of some measure of self-possession had, instead of cheering him up, been in such stark contrast to the last few weeks that it had, by the very fact of that contrast, driven home just how godawful his experience in the hospital had previously been. 

And he knew that was weird, as if he was saying he hadn't noticed what they were doing to him at the time and, obviously that wasn't true, but he had at least managed to distance himself from the terrible reality simply by drowning in a feeling of sheer hatred for all of them. Somehow, this sudden kind treatment (even if the altered hospital room and allowing him to _almost_ get dressed was intended to impress his brother rather than born of any genuine regret on the hospital's part) was damned unbearable.

Worst of all, he couldn't even settle in for a proper, cathartic crying jag because of the bridle.

He was beginning to understand why the Free Omegáres chose to voluntarily wear it. There was something soothingly calming about its effects. A pacifying, calming feeling was turning his whole body so languid and relaxed that it was almost impossible to hold on to his justifiable misery even though he suspected it _would_ probably be healthier overall to face his emotions rather than mask them with a new distraction.

But the sensations were irresistible. His rectal passage was maintaining a slow, squeezing rhythm against the smooth end of the bridle; a gentle, pulsing that throbbed in time with his heartbeat in a way totally unlike the manner it had responded to the insertion of the ridged peg. 

This wasn't perceived as an invader to be wrestled into submission but something his body welcomed as a comforting, placating fullness. Similarly, the end that pegged his vagina was a perfect length, shape and width to allow the tactile walls of his vaginal passage to whisper over its surface in undulating, exploratory waves that barely caressed the lightly ridged metal before retreating slightly and then regrouping to flow once more over the surface in a skimming kiss of shivering delight.

He imagined the bridle had to be partially hollow since, although it felt substantially heavy between his hips it wasn't overly so and, in some fashion it was variably weighted so that between its angled curves and the way it sat inside him, it was pretty obvious that it would sit snugly and securely without any requirement of his Flores to deliberately hold it in place. He still had the ability to forcibly eject it, he'd double-checked _that_ the moment he'd been left alone, but he was reasonably certain it wouldn't simply pop out by itself simply because his Flores decided it was fully replete.

Dean couldn't imagine how much something like that must have cost. It wasn't just the fact it was constructed of a gold so pure that it was a little soft rather than totally inflexible and he imagined that years of use would erode its surface and gradually wear its exterior to an even more perfect fit.

He might have imagined it would be uncomfortable to be dually plugged by cold metal and, indeed, it _had_ felt slightly uncomfortable when the device was first fitted. But the size and shape of the device was so perfectly designed that he couldn't imagine it restricting any movement and the cold metal had swiftly warmed to the ambient temperature of his own body. 

There was something so decadent about the idea of having both designer clothes and a designer _cunt_. Who would have thought that Dior would not only actually have the facilities to produce a custom-made Omegá sex toy but would be proud to display their unmistakable logo in inset diamonds on the plate that covered the exterior of his Flores? 

Somehow, simply by throwing a shed-load of money at the problem, Daniel had transformed the Beta Law intended to turn Dean into an object of derision into an opportunity to transform Dean into, if not a 'queen', then definitely a semblance of some kind of pampered Omegá princess.

It was undoubtedly intended as cossetting. The material of the kaftan-like gown was so gentle against his always hyper-sensitive skin that even if he were offered the choice of wearing Beta clothes instead, it no longer would have felt like an attractive option. Oddly, instead of envying Chucks freedom to do so, he found himself confused that Chuck made that choice at all. Daniel's decision to wear the revealing gowns now felt less like a proud announcement of body confidence than evidence of him so embracing comfort and hedonistic pleasure that he didn't give a damn what anyone else thought about his fashion choices.

And, speaking of hedonism, the slow pulses in Dean's ass and the gentle waves inside his vagina combined not into a crescendo of enforced orgasm but simply a gentle, constant thrum of subtle pleasure that lulled and soothed. He imagined this would be how it might feel to partake of a recreational drug like pot. A mellow, relaxing almost meditative rhythm that enabled a pleasant numbness to ease his fired nerves and smoothed the edges of his sorrow until his emotions could be slipped away into neat, manageable boxes. 

He imagined it was a desire to achieve such a zen-like state that lay behind an Omegá's choice to wear a bridle.

Dean found himself genuinely amused to think that whenever the Omegá queens were sitting in their Pack halls on their thrones, looking all cool and mysterious and wise to the other Pack members, they were secretly all indulging themselves with the Omegáren equivalent of a crafty toke.

And suddenly the idea of leaving the hospital didn't seem quite as daunting as it had before. 

It wasn't that he didn't want to get the fuck away from the hellhole he'd been living in, it was simply that the idea of life on the outside had actually threatened to be worse. He was about to face the absolutely most mortifying situation he could imagine; returning to school as an Omegá. 

Sometimes he liked to imagine that all the Losers would be as cool as Charlie about his designation but, even if they were, that would hardly compensate for the utter humiliation of having to walk into a classroom naked and pegged, with Alphas like Gordon drooling all over him and all the Betas staring at him like some kind of particularly fascinating sub-human animal. In some ways, the very non-sexual nature of Beta interest made it worse. There was something intrinsically creepy about the way that Betas were so obsessed with the sexuality of a designation they had no actual desire for. Whilst it wasn't as physically threatening as Alpha lust, it was definitely more disturbing on a lot of levels. Having spent weeks experiencing it first hand as dozens of Betas had found excuses to come into his room and stare at his exposed Flores with a weird combination of fascinated disgust, Dean had it up to the back teeth with what he considered nothing more than bizarre Beta perversion.

But despite, or even because of, his experience in the hospital and the contrast between how he had been treated and the way those same Betas had looked at Daniel as though he was some kind of fearful alien demigod, Dean now realised that a lot of Daniel's 'power' wasn't so much directly because of his relationship to Ophriel but the attitude he so confidently displayed _because_ of it.

Daniel was perfectly happy to walk through any public place virtually naked. He did so proudly, relishing in his own beauty and displaying it without shame or hesitation. He didn't flinch or cower. He strode like the Queen he knew himself to be and Betas dropped their eyes away from him, unwilling to offer him the satisfaction of their gaze. Knowing their curiosity wouldn't shame him but would simply further empower him as he spat in the eye of their prejudices with his shameless exhibitionism. 

And although Dean had no Primá or Pack to back him up, like Daniel did, there was no reason whatsoever why he couldn't _act_ as though he did. 

Maybe if he walked into school with his head held high and a smirk on his face and a ‘who gives a shit’ attitude, he _too_ could cause the Betas to flinch away from his aura of supreme confidence.

Maybe if he laughed aloud at their attempts to demean him and pretended to actually be _glad_ he now had an opportunity to _proudly_ reveal himself as an Omegá, he would steal their ability to hurt him with their vicious words and cruel curiosity. 

Perhaps the only way to survive the experience with his soul intact was to embody the role of proud pampered princess rather than objectified Omegá victim.

Fake it until you make it. 

A maxim to live by, maybe. 

~

Sam was alternating between sulky petulance, guilt and self-defensiveness. 

He was genuinely pissed about what had been done to Dean. Every time he thought about It, his own balls wanted to crawl up inside him and hide for fear of meeting the same fate. As a male, he felt an intrinsic horror of even the _thought_ of castration so the idea it had happened to Dean made him feel sick and violated and not a little nauseous. Sure Dean had only had a teeny practically _pointless_ weeny, but it _had_ still been part of his body and shouldn’t have been removed against his will.  Azazel shared his horror, stressing how vehemently he'd argued to prevent it but how his hands had been tied, ultimately, by Sam's own mistake in signing the medical permissions. 

And although Sam clearly recalled Azazel encouraging him to do so, it was inarguably true that it had been _his_ responsibility to read the detail of what he was signing. 

"I'm really sorry, Sam," Azazel had said, several times. "I blame myself entirely. I should never have expected a pup, even one as bright as you, to adequately read a document carefully before signing it. I should have insisted on double-checking it myself instead of assuming you knew what you were doing. It's completely my fault."

So, somehow, every time Mr Al'asfar apologised, it made Sam feel even worse. 

And, Sam being Sam, with the additional pressure of Alpha hormones that caused his temper to spike whenever he felt threatened, the more guilty that he felt, the more angrily defensive he became.

After all, it was done, wasn't it? No amount of hand-wringing guilt was magically going to reattach Dean's genitals so there was little point crying over spilt milk.

Still, he tried to gird himself not to react and bite back when Dean inevitably ripped a strip off him for allowing it to happen. As Azazel had pointed out to him, Dean was almost certain to make a drama out of a crisis.

“Of course he’s going to react like a teenage girl, Sam. He’s an Omegá anyway and now he’s been docked, realistically, he _is_ fundamentally a girl now.  And girls have a tendency to snivel and cry and make you feel bad about things just by putting on the waterworks. As if you don’t already feel bad enough about your mistake, Dean’s probably going to be a right little Diva about it. He’ll probably even try to make you feel worse by making up a load of tall tales about how terribly badly he was treated in the hospital. Despite the fact you’ll see with your own eyes how well they’ve looked after him, he’ll probably pretend he’s had an awful time _just_ to make you feel worse,” Azazel advised. “But that’s just how girls behave, Sam, and the best way to handle them isn’t to argue. Just pat him on the head and sympathise and pretend to believe everything he says. That’s the easiest way to deal with him and make him happy again.” 

Sam frowned doubtfully. He knew Azazel meant well and _maybe_ he was right that Dean was going to exaggerate a little, but even if Dean _was_ a girl now (and Sam would rather bite off his own tongue than ever dare attempt to say _that_ to Dean out loud anyway) Sam’s experience of girls wasn’t that they snivelled and cried. Judging by his mom and Ellen and Jo and Charlie, girls were definitely the more dangerous of the sexes anyway.

He knew that Dean, girl or not, was definitely going to give him a hard time so although he was excited to go and collect him, he was equally dreading his initial reception.  He suspected there was far more likelihood of him getting a few knuckles to his jaw than witnessing any ‘waterworks’ but decided to prepare for either option.

Azazel was right about the hospital.  The ward Dean was on was bright, airy and cheerful and Dean had been allotted his own private room at the far end, a room that had a wide picture window, cheerful décor, nice furniture and even a wide-screen television on the wall.  Whatever nightmare scenarios had chased through Sam’s head whenever he’d pictured the circumstances of his brother’s incarceration, the reality was far different. There wasn’t even a lock on the door handle so his idea that Dean might have been kept as a virtual prisoner was equally unfounded.

As far as Sam could see, Dean had simply spent the weeks of his recuperation in a place more evocative of a mid-class hotel than the Bedlam he’d half-expected so, except for the unfortunate misunderstanding that had led to Dean being docked, it appeared that Azazel was right and all of his worries had been unfounded after all.

“Hi, Dean,” he said, a little sheepishly, as instead of jumping up to greet him, Dean remained seated in the chair next to his bed, his face expressionless rather than dark with fury (or even tears).

Dean didn’t respond, he simply stared at Sam with an almost dispassionate look of contemplation as though applying some quiet, secret judgement on him. 

Sam shuffled uncomfortably, biting his lower lip, not sure at all how to handle this completely unfamiliar incarnation of his brother.  He’d planned what to do when Dean yelled at him. He’d even had a plan B ready for if Azazel was correct and Dean just burst into tears.  It hadn’t ever occurred to him that Dean’s response to his arrival might be to simply say nothing at all.

He squirmed on the spot. “I’ve come to take you home, Dean,” he wheedled, begging for a reaction, _any_ reaction.

And still, Dean just looked at him, clearly waiting for something although nothing in his expression offered any clue to Sam of what that might be. 

“Mr Al’asfar’s house is really nice,” he assured his brother. “We both have our own rooms and yours is really nice. It’s… it’s… well it’s on the first floor, right next to mine and we have our own bathroom and everything and it’s, well, really…” Sam stumbled to a halt, his mind going blank as he struggled for a different adjective before giving in and weakly repeating, “nice.”

Dean just continued to looked at him as though he was a particularly interesting bug.

Sam burst into tears.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I’m so, so sorry. It’s all my fault. I know it is and I’m sorry. I’m s..s…s…sorry.” 

And, finally, Dean’s expression softened a little and he flowed to his feet. 

He neither acknowledged nor accepted Sam’s apology but, with the poise of a queen, he simply gestured gracefully towards the door. 

“Then you may take me home, Sam,” he said, as though bestowing an honor on an unworthy subject, and then simply walked past Sam in a sweep of designer silk. 

And, completely wrong-footed by the composure of this this new, strangely self-assured Dean, Sam could only scurry after him in bewildered confusion.


	62. Chapter Fifty Eight

Pretending to be someone other than yourself was exhausting, Dean decided, but had its benefits too.  His initial instinctive response to Sam walking into his hospital room was an overwhelming desire to punch the sheepish look right off his face. And he did somewhat regret not giving into the impulse. However, his instinctive response to Sam bursting into tears had unfortunately been the protective urge to throw his arms around the pup and offer comfort. He did not regret not giving into _that_ particular impulse. Despite his love for his little brother, he was justifiably wary of acting in any way that might somehow be perceived as a validation of Sam’s actions. 

Pretending to be an Omegá had enabled him to avoid both impulses altogether and maintain an aura of calm indifference.  Obviously he felt neither calm nor indifferent but he _appeared_ to be, and that was the crux of the matter.

Dean didn’t even find it that difficult to pull off. He was a consummate actor, after all. He’d spent fourteen years faking being a Beta, followed by two years faking an ‘imminent’ presentation as an Alpha.  Being a fake Omegá was only slightly more problematical but, since he’d chosen the role of a particular _kind_ of Omegá, it was certainly easier than he’d anticipated.

But it was still exhausting to constantly have to second guess every reaction he made and expression he showed and every word that he uttered. The persona he’d chosen to present did, at least, lend itself to taking a moment’s reflection before response. It was consequently not blatantly obvious that he was having to pause, take a breath, and let a couple of heartbeats to pulse calmness through his body with the aid of the bridle, before allowing himself to visibly react.

He supposed someone might think it was weird that he was having to ‘fake’ being an Omegá at all but the truth was that _Omegá_ was simply his biological designation. It wasn’t who he was. Unlike Daniel who had been born and raised to be a proud independent Omegá and therefore embraced his designation as a fundamental part of his being, Dean had been raised to think and act in ways that leant themselves far more towards the Alpha designation. That’s why he highly doubted he would last five minutes attempting to portray the _other_ , more usual, personification of a Beta Land Omegá. 

Perhaps if Mary Winchester had raised him to think and act like a typical Beta, even, he would have found it easier to accept the role the Betas wanted to impose on him. He’d never know. But Alpha personalities did not lend themselves to acting the victim.  For instance, Dean was fully aware that the average Alpha faced with the choice between a discipline castration and execution, almost inevitably chose the latter. Whilst ‘death before dishonour’ would be overstating it a little, Alpha-types definitely required at least an illusion of personal dignity to be maintained to survive an otherwise intolerable situation. 

Dean knew that he _wasn’t_ an Alpha, but equally was self-aware enough to understand that he _thought_ like one and, in his unique situation, portraying himself as a _proud_ Omegá was the only method by which he could feed his soul-deep need to maintain his dignity.

Ultimately, even at sixteen he was wise enough to understand that it didn’t matter two hoots what other people thought about him. The only thing of critical importance was how he thought about _himself_.

He reminded himself of this as he reached the nursing station at the end of the ward, next to the exit doors, where Azazel Al’asfar was talking to a white-coated doctor.  Azazel saw his approach, striding with apparent confidence several steps ahead of Sam, and something flickered oddly in his expression, a weird mix of surprise, annoyance and, peculiarly, maybe even reluctant respect. 

“Dean,” he said. “You look so well. What a pleasant surprise. This is Dr Farrell. He performed both your orchiectomy and penectomy.” His eyes glinted as he waited for Dean’s explosive reaction.

Dean took a breath, counted two beats, then calmly replied, “I believe, for clarity, the generic term _docking_ suffices.”

Oddly, his failure to respond as expected caused Doctor Farrell to look a little defensive. “Docking implies a cosmetic choice. The surgery was performed as a prophylactic measure. You should appreciate it as such.”

Dean smiled enigmatically. “I’m certain, when the time comes, my future Primá will accord you with a full measure of all the appreciation you deserve, Dr Farrell.” 

As the Doctor paled significantly at the implied threat, Dean turned his attention to Azazel who was looking at him with puzzled curiosity but, strangely, not necessarily any disapproval. “Shall we leave now, Mr Al’asfar?” Dean asked, though it was clearly a demand rather than a suggestion.

“Certainly,” Azazel replied, offering his arm to Dean in a surprisingly courtly gesture.

And, deciding it suited the role he was playing, Dean graciously accepted the offered arm and allowed Azazel to escort him out of the building. 

~ 

Castiel found Meg in the front yard, giving her 'puppy' its morning exercise. Having decided she was far too busy to 'walk' her pet and not wanting it to get fat, Meg had gotten into the habit of using a lunge rein and a long whip to simply make it run around in wide circles every morning. The puppy, which Meg had decided to simply name 'bitch', was getting remarkably adapt at trotting around on its four stumpy little 'legs', encouraged by the bite of Meg's whip against its buttocks. It made a surprisingly cheerful noise as it scurried around attempting to escape the sharp stinging whip because large heavy metal bells dangled from its painfully stretched tits and jangled merrily as it ran.

It usually spent most of the rest of the day being dragged around by a choke chain as it struggled to keep up with Meg's fast strides as she bustled busily around the Pack Hall until Meg finally tired of it and put it away in its crate in the centre of the Pack Hall to entertain the rest of the Pack in whatever way they saw fit.

One of the lowly ninth Alphas was assigned to look after its feeding and eliminations and Castiel had little doubt it consequently spent most of its evenings in the lesser ranked Alpha Barracks keeping various Alpha cocks warmed but nobody had asked the question of what happened to it at night because no one really cared one way or the other.

"Not wanting to interrupt your play time, Meg, but Jophiel called. He's planning to drop in here on his way to Raphael's for his meeting with Michael and he's got a party of eight with him. I expect you want to sort out their accommodations yourself."

"Is Joshua going to be one of the eight?" Meg asked, her eyes lighting with happy excitement.

“Yes,” Castiel nodded, “and, even better for you, Jophiel's planning to leave him here for a few weeks whilst he goes to China with Michael. He apparently thinks the situation over there is going to be a bit too much excitement for a pregnant Omegá to handle but he didn’t want to leave him at home either. Joshua isn’t the type to handle ‘abandonment’ well."

"Joshua's pregnant _again_? What the hell is in the water down south?" 

Castiel smirked. "I think considering the way Joshua behaves, it's more amazing this is only his second pup."

Meg chuckled. "Tell the truth, it's more surprising to me that Jophiel has enough energy left to mount Joshua at all. I’m led to believe your brother is constantly driven to exhaustion fulfilling his Primá duties." 

Castiel laughed out loud. "I think Jophiel's new plan is to keep Joshua permanently in pup from now on in the hope it might control his libido," he suggested. “If it doesn’t work, he’s going to have to demote all of his First Alphas.”

It was true that despite entering his marriage as a virgin, immediately after the ceremony was over Joshua, whom Meg loved as dearly as a younger brother, had burst into cheerful celebration of his sexuality with an enthusiastic rampant wantonness that had left even Chuck a little speechless.  Between Joshua’s tendency to run around stark naked and his inbuilt air of entitlement to simply demand whatever satisfaction he desired, all twelve of Jophiel's first Alphas were, as a result, finding themselves in constant need of their Primá's personal attention and, whilst that was making the Southern Packs strong and cohesive in a way they hadn't been in centuries, Jophiel was consequently certainly looking a little worse for wear.

Although an Omegáren pregnancy couldn't be harmed by sex with an Alpha, it was the natural instinct of a pregnant Omegá to temporarily lose interest in sex altogether. A foetal Primá couldn't survive its mother being vaginally mounted because of the way an Omegá rearranged his internal organs to create the capacity to accept a Primá cock. Whilst anal sex didn't have the same disastrous consequences on a pup, it was still unlikely for an Omegá to overcome his natural instinctive aversion to sex during pregnancy. 

So Castiel was of the opinion that Jophiel's main interest in impregnating Joshua was to allow his own cock to get a bit of much needed rest. Though Castiel also thought it served Jophiel right for making the mistake of appointing so many First Alphas in the first place.

"Does this mean Michael's finally convinced the Emperor to do it?" Meg asked. 

"It seems so. Only two of the Emperor's sons are still alive now and the Emperor has gotten through fourteen food tasters already. He knows he's unlikely to survive to the end of the year. Fortunately, he seems to care enough for his brides to set it in law that instead of them automatically being buried alive with him, as per Chinese tradition, they'll be given the option to accept Michael's offer."

Meg curled her lip. 

"You don't approve of Michael's plan?" Castiel asked, with a frown of confusion.

"I think the _plan's_ great. I just don't approve of Michael in general."

"He is a bit too up his own ass," Castiel agreed, "but what he's doing is definitely a good thing." 

"Of course it is," Meg agreed. "I just hate the pompous, self-satisfied look on his face whenever he pontificates about all his 'good works'."

"I know you dislike him," Castiel agreed. "Originally Michael intended to meet with Jophiel _here_ but I knew you'd hate having to entertain my least favorite uncle in your own house if it could be avoided and it made sense for Michael to meet up with Raphael anyway now that Canada annexing the Confederacy is looking extremely likely." 

"Appreciated," Meg said. "And of course I've always agreed the idea of a luxury 'retirement village' for widowed and barren Omagáres is a good thing. I still don't approve of how your uncle Lucifer uses the existence of Michael's facility to swap and change his brides at will but offering a home to the Chinese Omagáres can only be seen as a good thing. I just hate how smugly proud of himself Michael is for doing it. He reminds me of that evangelical ablest archbishop in Kansas who's always on the television. What's his name? Rick or Mick or something." 

"Do you mean Dick Roman?" Castiel asked, with a puzzled frown. 

"That's the one. I mean, don't get me wrong. I know the two of them are politically poles apart but they both share the same dogmatic certainty in their own divinely approved mandates. And the same self-important smugness. Gaggh. I’d like to slap _both_ their faces _._ "

Castiel was startled to realise he agreed with the comparison now that Meg had pointed it out. Despite the absolute opposites of their Agendas, the two men were surprisingly similar. Both men shared a similar religious fervour and smug self-righteousness, presented to the world under a mask of smarmy good-looks and charm.

Though, if you judged a man by his works, rather than by his intentions, neither Roman nor Michael could be faulted. 

Dick Roman was the rarest of Betas in that he had access to a surprising amount of personal wealth and he spent a lot of that wealth in support of programs to offer cheap housing and schools for the least fortunate of Beta society. He ran soup kitchens for the homeless and heavily subsidised healthcare for people without access to medical insurance. On the surface, Dick Roman was a 'good' man but the fact he was also one of the most influential proponents of a religion that advocated the dehumanising of Omegáres and the forcible incarceration of Alphas cast serious doubt on that assumption.

Likewise, Michael's intent to ultimately provide Pack-funded medical clinics and social housing to _all_ Canadians, regardless of pack-affiliation or designation, was on the surface, a seriously impressive endeavour in itself even without his willingness to extend that generosity to any immigrants who crossed into Canadian territory. The fact that, these days, few people were ever successful in their applications for Canadian citizenship did, however, throw some doubt on the true depths of Michael's generosity. 

Meanwhile, it was the knowledge that gaining Canadian citizenship was so problematic that was making the idea of moving to the Confederacy such an attractive prospect to many American Beta citizens. Now it looked so likely that the Canadian border would be extended southwards to include the Confederate states, people were queuing at the Confederate border for admission, hoping to become Canadian citizens by default.

The American Beta Government had ambivalent feelings about that. On one hand, it made sense to allow Canada to acquire the financial responsibility of supporting the would-be emigrants as those most eager to leave the Union were the poorest of Beta society. Yet, there was concern that a lot of young, idealistic Betas would be drawn to the socialist ethos purported by Canada thereby causing a harmful brain-drain of 'useful' citizens also. It was a generally accepted fact that youngsters were often easily swayed to liberal ideologies before maturity and self-interest replaced their idealism with a more conservative mind-set. 

~

Dean was already feeling pretty proud of himself for his deportment throughout the day but he was sure he deserved the presentation of some kind of actual physical award for not simply blurting out “What the fuck is THAT?” when confronted by the ‘mounting stool’. 

Admittedly, the discrete placement of all the items helpfully provided by the local government for his personal care was a helpful factor in his ability to maintain his aura of emotional control.

Azazel lived in a perfectly ordinary and, in Sam’s words, ‘nice’ house and the bedroom provided for Dean was no different than that any Beta pup would expect. The only acknowledgement of his status whatsoever was the fact the wardrobe was empty save for the clothes provided by Daniel and the presence of a small discrete case containing sanitising items for the care of his bridle. 

All of the specific Omegá paraphernalia had been placed in a small windowless room in the basement, to which Azazel had escorted him alone. 

“I do realise it looks suspiciously like a dungeon in here,” Azazel apologised, “But I felt that you would appreciate privacy and discretion when attending to your personal needs. I realise that you were deprived of those courtesies in the hospital and I therefore have endeavoured to ensure that you don’t suffer the same outrage in a place that I want you to, at least eventually, feel is your home. I’ve deliberately brought you down here alone so that we can talk freely. You need to understand that I have attempted to the best of my ability to protect Sam from knowing any of the more… sordid…. details of your incarceration.

“Obviously he is aware of your docking and is both furious and profoundly guilty for accidentally signing the permissions that allowed it to happen. I have, however, been careful not to imply it was anything other than a straightforward medical decision by the hospital.  He knows nothing about what else happened to you there and, though I cannot be your conscience, I am hoping you will allow him to remain ignorant. He is just a young pup, and one with an…unfortunate temper. I feel the consequences of him discovering the truth could be quite… well, injurious to him.” 

Dean breathed. Then breathed a little more. Then said, “So _you_ know what they did to me?”

Azazel flushed slightly. “I don’t know all the details, but I have a fair idea. It wasn’t a picture I wanted to paint in Sam’s imagination. I worried it might incite him into ‘rage’.  I know you don’t really know me, Dean, and have no reason whatsoever to trust me. But please believe, at least, that Sam’s welfare is extremely close to my heart.”

“But not mine?” Dean challenged.

“I don’t _know_ you,” Azazel replied. “I care about you as a human being and as Sam’s brother, but I won’t lie and pretend there’s more than that to my concern.  I wanted to offer Sam a home. You, as Sam’s brother, come as part of the package.  I’m just hoping your presence here doesn’t prove to be detrimental to him.  It would be unfortunate if you allowed _your_ issues to become _his_ issues.  Sam has enough to overcome simply because of his designation. It is hardly fair that he’s additionally been saddled with the responsibility of an Omegá brother. Still, I know he loves you very much and so, for his sake, I want to offer you as much support as I am able to. I only ask that you don’t selfishly allow him to suffer because of your dissatisfaction with the legal privations imposed on you by your own designation.” 

Dean breathed. 

It took all his self-control not to speak out loud. To just nod his apparent acceptance of Azazel’s point. 

He was beginning to understand Sam a _lot_ more now.

All those hours in his special advanced placement class listening to the whispering of Azazel’s snakelike tongue had clearly influenced even more of Sam’s behaviour than Dean had ever previously imagined.

He wanted to confront Azazel, let him know in no uncertain terms that he _knew_ the Beta had used the same clever manipulations on his little brother. He wanted to make it absolutely, crystal clear to the Beta that he, Dean Winchester, saw right through his act and knew him for what he really was. A dark, cunning spider spinning some clever complex web, the purposes of which were still uncertain.

But that would be stupid.

Playing his hand so early could have disastrous consequences for both he _and_ Sam.  Dean didn’t know the stakes yet. Couldn’t even begin to imagine what was really going on here. Whilst it was absolutely obvious to Dean that Azazel had an agenda, he couldn’t even begin to figure out what it could possibly be.  If he were working for the government, his actions didn’t make any sense whatsoever and clearly he wasn’t working for Daniel.  The one stark truth that seemed unmistakeable though, was that whatever Azazel was up to was related to Sam, not himself.

It was _Sam_ who was, somehow, in danger here. Though Dean had no idea what form the threat would ultimately take. And he, somehow, was simply being used as a way to manipulate Sam for some purpose that, again, Dean could not imagine.

So Dean breathed.

And breathed again.

And, when he finally spoke it was only to say, in a calm, emotionless voice, “So perhaps you would be kind enough to detail those legal privations for me.”

 

~

 


	63. Chapter Fifty Nine

Because he was released from the hospital on a Verdesday, Azazel decided it made no sense for Dean to attend school with Sam the next morning. It was better, he said, if Dean attended on the following Lunesday and stayed at home alone on that first Farasday.

Dean was surprised but grateful for the small reprieve. He was further astounded to be handed a key to the front door in case he wanted to go out during the day whilst Sam and Azazel were at school without him. 

"You're a guest in this house, not a prisoner," Azazel pointed out, with an easy smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. "There's no law preventing you from leaving the house if you want to. As long as you're appropriately dressed and wearing your bridle, nobody can criticise Sam for allowing you _that_ much freedom. I admit there might be some questions raised because of your unattended buttocks but I believe a certain amount of leeway will be allowed on that point for a day or two because of Sam's age."

Dean digested that point without comment. As Azazel had admitted the previous afternoon in the basement, whilst the law clearly stated that an Alpha Guardian could be brought to task for Omegá neglect (or even the far more serious charge of Omegá abuse) if it was perceived that Dean's 'needs' were being neglected, the only visible evidence of that supposed neglect would be if Dean was never seen to have ‘adequately’ reddened buttocks. 

The local government representatives could insist until they were blue in the face that an Omegá required a daily full double pegging, and had provided the mounting stool and other equipment for that purpose but, since no one from the government had the right to demand to witness it being actually done, Azazel said that, as far as he was concerned, what happened in the basement stayed in the basement. So, although legally Azazel had to insist that Sam and Dean spent a couple of hours together in that room every evening, he cared less what they actually did in there.

"You can play chess or read a book for all I care. I don't want to know. I just have to be able to honestly say, when asked, that Sam dedicates at least that much time to your 'needs' every day but that I don't know the specific details as I don't stand witness to what he is choosing to do with you.

"The only problem you're going to have is when people notice, and they will, that you aren't being spanked. Your unmarked bottom is going to be clearly visible evidence that you aren't being either mounted or adequately pegged. The clothes you're wearing are far too translucent to conceal the colour of your buttocks. It's one of the primary justifications for the legal requirement for an Omegá to be virtually naked in public. It allows everyone to clearly see whether or not you are being adequately 'cared for'. Whilst I don’t deny the more probable reason for objecting to Omegáres wearing ‘proper’ clothes is an attempt to dehumanise you, the need to easily confirm your constant ‘welfare’ is the official explanation for the practice.

"Of course, you have a couple of days to come to terms with how you want to handle that. Because of the unfortunate events leading to Dr Rosen's departure, the hospital never got around to giving Sam his intended lessons on how to look after you properly, so it will be understandable if he takes a day or two to do some research on the subject, but I wouldn't suggest you attend school without addressing the problem. All it would take would be a formal, legal challenge from one of the other Alphas and Sam could be put in a position of having to perform a formal, officially witnessed mounting or surrender his claim on you. I highly doubt either of you would wish to be put in that position." 

It turned out that Dean's particularly precarious legal position was almost purely because of Sam's age. Were Sam an adult, his decisions relating to Dean's treatment would be less closely scrutinised and it would take a considerable amount of legal shenanigans for anyone to attempt to dispute his claim. Short of Sam being caught in the performance of some particularly heinous act that could not be seen as anything other than clear abuse of Dean, his decisions would not be subject to question or correction. As a legal minor, however, his 'ownership' was precarious at best. And, of course, if Sam lost his guardianship of Dean, Dean would inevitably also lose his guardianship of Sam. 

So, basically, whilst there was no necessity for Sam to actually use Dean sexually as long as Azazel kept quiet, or even to follow the rules relating to how Dean ought to be pegged, there was apparently no avoiding the necessity for Dean to have a daily spanking. 

Hence why the basement was fitted not only with a mounting stool but also the helpful addition of a spanking bench.

"Of course, I'd be willing to do it to you myself, to spare Sam," Azazel offered. "But I fear that might trigger a possessive reaction in him that could hasten his descent into the ‘rage’, so it’s unlikely to be your best option. Though, of course, as I said, I am not your conscience. The choice remains entirely your own."

And that, of course, was the trump card that could negate any amount of careful planning on Dean's part; Sam reaching the time of his rut rage. Though, fortunately, that still seemed unlikely to happen _naturally_ for a while.

It appeared that Kevin had been on the right lines when he'd suggested Metatron had entered his rage so early because of his short stature. It seemed a biologically driven fact that the smaller the Alpha, the sooner they physically matured as a defence mechanism against larger Alphas. Since Sam seemed destined to become one of the biggest Alphas ever, his own maturity was taking its own sweet time in arriving. Although his Alphaesque behaviour was becoming less predictable month by month, Sam had still not evidenced any signs of actual biological 'rage' and, according to Azazel, it could be as much as another year or two before it manifested, given how tall and muscular he was becoming.

Unless, of course, something happened to trigger it to exhibit more quickly such as Sam feeling threatened by someone else intimately touching _his_ Omegá.

"Which is exactly why I concealed what truly happened in the hospital from him," Azazel claimed, "and why I suggest that you do, too." 

The problem with dealing with a really accomplished liar, Dean realised, was that the reasons their lies were so plausible was that they always were buried within undisputable truths. So although Dean was fully aware that Azazel was misleading him in _some_ deliberate fashion, he was also imparting some serious, valid and important knowledge. The difficult part was trying to decipher where the actual lie lay.

So as soon as he was left alone, Dean dove onto Sam's computer which, fortunately was still protected with his old password, and ran a search on the legal position of an underage Alpha guardian. What he discovered was sobering. If anything, Azazel had _understated_ the dangers the brothers faced. There was definitely legal precedent for Sam to be replaced as Dean's guardian, and the potential punishments for an Alpha found guilty of Omegá neglect were considerably more serious than simply having their Omegá removed from their care. 

On a good note, Azazel's prediction that Sam's rage would present late was a proven statistical fact. It was highly likely that the brothers would have some significant time yet before the issue needed to be addressed.

The more Dean researched, the more he realised that Azazel wasn't actually 'lying' about _anything_. His deceptions were not about 'facts', they were simply in the way he presented those 'facts'. Azazel simply wove his web of little truths in such a way that he could manipulate the perception of those actualities. He found ways of making the unthinkable acceptable simply by boxing you in to see it as unavoidable. And, furthermore, he used a conversational sleight of hand that focused your attention in completely the wrong places.

The spanking was a case in point. Azazel was implying it was totally fine for Dean to stick to simply using the bridle to keep the edge off his sexual hunger and thus never use anything else in the basement except for the spanking bench. He was even making a point of how he would be happy to assist Dean in using the spanking as a way to deceive the authorities into believing Sam was mounting him. 

But what made that all a big fat lie was that Azazel, and Dean, both knew it wasn't going to be that simple. 

Whilst the bridle provided sufficient distraction to keep Dean's libido banked and controllable, Dean was balancing on a precarious knife edge of control and it wouldn't take much to push him over that precipice. Had the hospital never fully awoken his Flores with the number six peg, Dean was pretty certain he would have easily reached his marriage bed as a virgin. But now his body had been tricked into adapting itself to accommodate what it had perceived to be a Primá cock, it was fully expecting to repeat the experience sooner rather than later. Dean was suffering a constant, yearning feeling of emptiness in his womb, a terrible, ravening hunger. Using the bridle didn't sate the hunger, it simply distracted him from it. It was akin to a starving man chewing on a pebble, using the motion of mastication to distract from the aching pain of his empty stomach. It would work for a time but was inevitably, ultimately doomed to failure. 

Dean knew he had sufficient personal self-control to continue using the bridle indefinitely as an adequate substitute for what his body craved, but only as long as he was allowed to keep his equilibrium without additional external pressures knocking him off kilter. 

Which naturally brought him back to the spanking. 

Every day in the hospital since Becky's departure, the nurses assigned to his 'care' had used the reddening of his buttocks to force him to accept pegging. The fact he'd always subsequently rejected the pegs by expelling them with violent haste wasn't relevant. The fact remained that even though, as Daniel had said, Dean retained control of his own Flores and his effortless expulsion of the pegs proved _that_ point conclusively, there was still a huge question mark over how the nurses had managed to insert them in the first place. 

It _should_ have been possible for Dean to keep his Flores closed and sacrosanct, it should _theoretically_ have been impossible for the forcible insertion to have occurred at all.

And, knowing that, Dean had to face a sobering unwelcome truth. Apply enough careful attention to his buttocks, even against his will, and he, at least temporarily, apparently completely forgot he even wanted to keep his Flores closed at all. 

Accepting that truth was a bitter pill, but Dean didn't have the luxury of allowing himself to wallow in self-deception. He had too many external enemies to let himself be wilfully blind to his own weaknesses. He couldn’t fight a battle on two fronts. If he wanted to successfully repel the Betas assault on himself, he couldn’t be simultaneously fighting his own biology too. 

It was an unpalatable truth but one he had to face. Being spanked turned him on. As long as it was done by someone who knew what they were doing, who knew precisely how hard to apply the rhythm of their palm against the flesh of his buttocks, the resultant sensations of heat and tingling desire, as blood rose to the surface of his already hypersensitive skin, was absolutely and inarguably something that not only caused his Flores to open but eventually drove him so wild with lust that at the moment it happened he _literally_ forgot that he didn't want it to. 

It was only as the spanking ceased and was replaced by the insertion of the peg that he regained sufficient wherewithal to remember he was being violated against his will and would, consequently, immediately repel the invader.

Facing that unwelcome truth was important. 

And that was why Azazel was a liar.

Not because of what he said. Because of what he chose NOT to say.

Because Dean was absolutely sure that Azazel was fully aware of Dean's vulnerability, the small but crucial chink in his armour. Azazel knew that if Sam spanked Dean, there would ultimately be a moment every single time when Dean's Flores would suddenly burst open in clear, unmistakable invitation and no teen Alpha, rut rage or not, would be able to resist that summons indefinitely. 

So Sam _was_ going to mount him.

Maybe not immediately.  Perhaps it might take months to chip away at Sam’s distaste for the idea but eventually, inevitably, the day would come when temptation would come too much for him and he would dive right into the welcome of Dean’s ass.

Just as Daniel had warned him would happen.

And since Dean was already aware of that, had been aware of the inevitability of that moment since the day he’d returned home and discovered that Sam _was_ an Alpha, he couldn’t even pretend to be surprised.

That wasn’t the point.

The real question was why did Azazel not only _want_ it to happen but simultaneously attempt to imply to Dean that it _wasn’t_ an inevitability?

Possibly for exactly the same reason he seemed to be at pains to convince Sam that Dean wasn’t his _real_ brother. 

The thing was, and Dean had given the matter a _lot_ of thought since Sam’s presentation, Dean was pretty damned certain that _moral_ aversion to incest (as long as pregnancy was an impossible outcome) was very much a concept that was a Beta construct.  He’d examined his own feelings very carefully and had come to the conclusion that his own distaste for the idea was because Sam was _family_ not because he was _blood._ Sam was his brother, regardless of their blood relationship, just as Bobby had been his Uncle, despite no actual legal familial connection.  So even if Azazel was right about their parentage, _which he wasn’t_ , it still would no difference whatsoever to Dean’s feelings on the matter.

But he was pretty damned certain it made a significant difference to _Sam_.  All those Alfarsday sermons he’d sat through had probably had a fundamental effect on the shaping of Sam’s personal morality.  If Sam was so clearly programmed to see that it was his _blood_ relationship with Dean that was the issue, accepting there wasn’t any biological connection between them was probably going to be a large step towards overcoming any aversion to the idea. 

So yes, on the surface, that was a clear and understandable reason for Azazel to remove that obstacle. If all Azazel wanted to achieve was Sam’s ability to sail painlessly through his rut rage years by riding through the rage inside Dean’s ass, then that was perfectly logical.  Sick, but logical.

Only Dean’s gut told him that nothing was quite that straightforward. 

What would happen to Sam’s psyche if, say, he was later confronted with some incontrovertible proof that Dean _was_ his brother?  What if something as simple as orchestrating a reason for a DNA test would provide absolute evidence that Sam had broken his own rigid moral code? 

And whilst Dean had no idea whatsoever what anyone would achieve by destroying Sam by such a method and, indeed, had no actual proof that was a deliberate orchestration rather than an unfortunate possible future side effect of Azazel _genuinely_ believing they weren’t real brothers, there were a few absolutely unavoidable truths he needed to face: 

Azazel _wanted_ Dean to fight being mounted.  For some reason it suited his purposes to encourage Dean’s defiance and even pretend to support any necessary deception to the authorities to allow it. 

Azazel _wanted_ Dean to believe he could avoid being mounted. Presumably so that Dean _did_ fight Sam tooth and nail when it finally happened. 

So, maybe, Azazel wanted to drive a wedge between Dean and Sam and create a scenario where Dean hated and resented his brother. Sam in the meantime, when he was finally over his rage years, would look back in horror on his inadvertent actions, be faced with Dean’s loathing and then, maybe, even be presented with proof that he had done those terrible things to his own flesh and blood brother.

Whilst Dean had absolutely no idea _why_ that might be a useful scenario to Azazel, his gut was screaming at him that it was the only explanation that made even the slightest amount of sense.

He could bide his time to find out Azazel’s _reasons._

His priority was finding a way to prevent it happening at all. 

And, as much as he hated even the idea of what he was beginning to contemplate, he was pretty certain that the answer to the problem lay in the basement. 

He might never again get the opportunity to visit the room in complete privacy, without even another person lurking elsewhere in the house.  Today might be his one and only chance to get his head around his own biological reactions in an attempt to find a way to make the situation bearable for himself _and_ Sam. 

Perhaps, just as he was using his attitude and Daniel’s gifts to circumvent the Beta Laws regarding his deportment outside of the house, he might find method to side-step the way he was being set up to behave _inside_ the house. 

Remembering the way Azazel’s eyes had glinted with amusement as Dean had struggled not to flinch at the contents of the basement, Dean was pretty damned sure the answer lay in somehow, in the words of the unlamented Becky Rosen, ‘embracing his designation’ enough to disarm Azazel.

After all, he’d already said ‘Yes’ to Sam, which was something he doubted Azazel was aware of, so the accusation of ‘rape’ was off the table anyway.  

The most significant problem that remained was his own fear.

The reason he was so terrified of the mounting stool was that it was a stark reminder of how out of control his own responses had been when he’d been pegged by the hospital.  It didn’t matter how physically ‘pleasurable’ the experience of orgasm might be if it was something enforced and out of his control. Anything done against his will _was_ rape.

Of course, he could simply make the _choice_ not to resist.

Dean knew, however, that it wasn’t in his nature to simply _submit._   The very idea of just _submitting_ to the indignity of being mounted and giving in to the sensations imposed upon him as a result was nausea-inducing and ultimately pointless since, when push came to shove, he _would_ inevitably lose his cool and start fighting.

So the real question was whether he could learn to control his responses to penetration in the same way as he had learned to control his Flores.

Surely, if he _knew_ that even if he let a spanking open his Flores, and then allowed himself to be entered, even by Sam, and yet could still maintain control of his reaction to that penetration, maybe, just maybe, he could take ownership of the situation.

He would stop being scared. 

And if he wasn’t scared, he wouldn’t feel the _need_ to fight. 

And if he didn’t fight, then, when the time came, Sam wouldn’t have to force him.

And if Sam didn’t _force_ him, then Sam wouldn’t ever have to look back on the situation and remember himself doing so.

And maybe _that_ would leave Azazel and his secret ‘agenda’ even more thoroughly fucked than Dean himself.

So, with all that in mind, Dean straightened his shoulders and walked down to the basement.

 


	64. Chapter Sixty

Although the basement had no windows and so was lit only by a single, bare, suspended overhead electric lightbulb, somehow it felt lighter and brighter that morning than it had the previous late afternoon. Though, maybe, it was simply the lack of Azazel's presence that lifted the atmosphere as though his presence alone had cast a dark shadow on its interior.

Or perhaps, Dean allowed, it was simply that he himself was entering it in a better frame of mind.

Approaching the contents of the room with keen inquisitiveness rather than instinctive dread certainly cast them under a slightly different light.

The mounting stool, for instance, was not as dreadful in appearance as he'd previously thought. It was smaller and lower than his memory suggested and its design was intriguing if you examined it objectively. Though he couldn't help wondering why so much concept design had gone into a device intended for use by comparatively so few people. Whilst he understood the economic reasoning behind rut houses, and Azazel had confirmed the stool had been perfected for that specific purpose, it still seemed improbable for so much effort and thought to have been implemented to solve such a small problem.

Peculiarly, it confirmed the odd dichotomy of Beta attitudes to Omegáres that something so clearly primarily intended to exploit his designation should also have been made with so much apparent care for Omegá comfort. As Azazel said, there was no point holding the origin of the stool against it. It still was a perfectly designed product for ensuring masturbatory pleasure and were an Omegá of the mind to also welcome the secondary stimulation of Alpha penetration then its dual purpose was not necessarily an evil thing in itself.

Viewed objectively, it wasn't even designed in a way that would easily lend itself to an Omegá being physically forced to mount it. Short of a couple of strong people literally picking him up and lifting him into position, he couldn't see how he could be forcibly made to use it even if he hadn't learned to control his Flores. So the whole principle of the thing totally depended on an Omegá _choosing_ to mount the stool voluntarily.

And whilst that in itself confirmed nothing more than how cleverly the Betas had learned to manipulate an Omegá's own reproductive imperative, it gave some substance to his own thought that maybe it was possible to use the device for his own purposes without allowing the satisfaction of his own 'needs' to become an opportunity for abuse.

His primary concern was the size of the peg that had been fitted and even that, now he viewed it dispassionately, was adjustable. On a small side table, ranged in sizes, there were a series of pegs from a number one through to a five and each had a flat metal plate welded to their bases that suggested they were for use with the stool rather than any other purpose.

Indeed, when he examined the stool itself it became obvious that the pegs were interchangeable and simply locked into a mechanism on the base plate. It took him only a moment's contemplation to figure out how to remove the number six peg from the stool and replace it with a number three.

That done, he looked more closely at how the stool worked. It appeared that to actually use the stool, he would have to straddle the low seat, position himself carefully over the peg and then lower his knees on to the two padded knee-rests provided until the head of the peg was settled inside the opening of his Fores. As far as he could see, the moment his Flores began to suction the peg inwards to fill him, the seat would begin to rise, ratcheting itself upwards and eventually locking in place at a roughly waist high position and then the seat would tilt forwards approximately 45 degrees, forcing his weight to rest fully on his knees, lowering his head downwards and thus thrusting his buttocks up high enough to offer easy access to his rectal passage.

Testing the device with his hands, he established that it would be difficult but not _impossible_ to return to an upright stance simply by throwing his head backwards and rising at the waist and thereby using simply his body weight to tip the seat back to a horizontal position. The tilt mechanism on the seat itself was not controlled by ratchets and gears. It simply moved with his body, although, looking at the angle of the peg, he could see why an Omegá would naturally choose to tip forward when penetrated by it.

What worried him the most about the device was that it wouldn't be possible to simply _eject_ the peg. He would have to use a considerable amount of muscular control to relax his Flores completely around the still embedded peg and then cautiously and carefully lift his body off it. Otherwise he would literally be trapped on the stool for hours until he was so exhausted that his Flores gave up by itself.

A slow extraction like that would be considerably more difficult than swift expulsion of a loose peg. Dean could imagine that if he let the peg touch the walls of his vagina as he lifted himself off, it was highly likely the touch would reactiviate his Flores and he would become trapped in place once more.

So it seemed that the particular problem with the device was that it was a honey trap. Dean could understand why an aroused Omegá might make the choice to use it in the first place, he could feel its allure for himself. The problem lay primarily with how difficult it would be to dismount it.

That scenario worried him so much he almost gave up, turned around and left the room immediately. He certainly would have done so if the number six peg was still in place. But a number three was far less daunting. Without a plug in his ass to cause a counterpoint of sensations, he was reasonably certain a number three would be manageable. Fat enough to satisfy him far more than the bridle he was wearing but not so large it would overwhelm him. The nurses had, after all, been daily inserting a number four in him and the bridle was practically as large as a size two. So a three would ease some of the pressure he was feeling without being too much to handle.

He hoped.

He imagined the tilting motion of the plate would considerably enhance the sensations he felt and even thinking about that caused his Flores to pulse and he smelt the unmistakable evidence of his own slick gathering in eager anticipation. He licked his lips absently, feeling his control beginning to teeter as the hunger deep inside his womb began to send angry, insistent signals to his groin.

Wow. An Omegá really was designed to be on a sexual hair-trigger, he realised.

And that abruptly pissed him off.

What a godawful, stupid, absolutely insane way to create a species of human being. What the hell had the All-Father been smoking when he came up with the idea of Omegá design?

It was all very well saying, if you believed that kind of thing, that Omegáres were designed to emulate the physical nature of the Omadonna but, let’s face it, it was apparently the All-Father who created _him_ too.  What kind of God, faced with the idea of creating himself a mate, decided to design one as a perfect walking, talking sex-toy?

A dick one. That’s who.

The All-Father was, clearly, a bit of a dick.

Actually, he was a huge big _bag_ of dicks.

Dean threw back his head and in the general direction of the ceiling yelled, "YOU'RE A FUCKING DICK!"

He waited for a moment, breath bated, and then, when his yell didn't result in a sudden retributory bolt of lightning striking down and charring him on the spot, he shrugged angrily and, stepping back from the stool, decided to investigate the other contents of the room.

There was a selection of ordinary pegs, both vaginal and anal, next to a chair that was shaped in a form far too reminiscent of the gynaecological bed for comfort. There were straps to hold him down and further straps to tie his legs into various contortions. The chair was clearly designed without any requirement for an Omegá to 'voluntarily' participate in its use. It also tilted, but did so in a backwards direction so that he would be left reclining flat on his back, with his knees pulled back towards his shoulders to offer easy access to his entire Flores.

He imagined a creative sadist could have tons of fun playing with an Omegá strapped inside the chair though it was unlikely the position offered any opportunities for actual mounting so maybe it was more designed to get an Omegá so hot and eager for real penetration that, released from the chair, he would race over to the mounting stool and jump on board without hesitation.

God, that was a sickening thought.

Primarily because Dean had the distinct feeling that it was highly unlikely that any Alpha would have the self-control to use the chair at all. Alphas in rage were all about immediate personal gratification. They didn't have the patience for performing elaborate 'foreplay' to encourage an Omegá's compliance. Dean was pretty certain that an Alpha met with an unwilling Omegá would swiftly back off and look for easier, _Beta_ prey rather than mess about trying to change the Omegá's mind.

Which meant the chair was designed for use by _Betas_ , not Alphas.

Dean could suddenly picture it clearly, decades of Betas in rut houses physically forcing Omegáres into the chairs and then systematically abusing them with pegs to drive them crazy with lust until, like mindless animals, the Omegáres leapt 'voluntarily' onto the mounting stools to await the attendance of the waiting Alphas.

That, undoubtedly, was how the Betas had overcome the physical impossibility of an Alpha mounting an unwilling Omegá. By the time the teen Alphas were led into the room the Omegá was probably literally _begging_ to be fucked.

And that clearly begged the question of what the hell such a contraption was doing in Azazel's basement, didn't it?

If Dean had been in any doubt whatsoever over the falsity of Azazel's altruistic credentials, the chair alone laid them to rest.

There was only one possible reason Azazel had accepted delivery of _that_ particular item into his basement. If Sam's spanking of Dean failed to achieve sufficient indication of Dean's willingness to be mounted to enable Sam to perform, Azazel would presumably use the chair instead to get Dean ready and then bring Sam into the room to find an Omegá who was apparently hot and hungry for him.

Still, given that Dean was physically bigger than Azazel, he wasn't sure how the Beta imagined he would be able to wrestle Dean into the chair in the first place. Maybe that was why Azazel was hoping the spanking would be sufficient by itself. He probably thought that after a few weeks or months of nothing more than the bridle to satisfy him, the daily spankings would drive Dean into such a state of need that he would eventually explode like a volcano and actually demand for someone, anyone, to mount him.

And a number of the anal plugs were worryingly large. Whilst Dean had little fear of his _vaginal_ capacity for accepting huge intruders, his ass had only ever received a number one peg. Even the perverted Becky had only ever used a number one peg, albeit she’d used a _vaginal_ one.

He found himself wondering exactly how large an Alpha cock actually was. and, inevitably, whether Sam had a cock in proportion to his over large frame. Suddenly, he idea of being mounted by him, already something distasteful to contemplate, developed into a whole new type of anxiety. What if Sam was simply too big to fit inside him anyway? What if _that_ was another purpose of the chair, to gradually prepare his ass for a particularly substantial Alpha cock in the same way the hospital had endeavoured to prepare his vaginal passage to accept a Primá one?

After all, none of Azazel’s plans would ever come to fruition if, when push came to shove, Sam simply couldn’t fit inside him anyway.

Dean didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh at that thought or to cry.

Actually, that pretty much summed up how he felt about most of the equipment in the room. It was so blatantly, horribly obscene that it was almost laughable.

Yet, a half-hatched plan that had been forming in his head since the moment he’d decided to descend to the basement was starting to coalesce into something specific and workable and nothing in the room was detracting from that idea if only he could figure out how to amend one of the anal plugs for his purposes.

Where was a damned bone saw when you needed one?

Though, come to think of it, Azazel lived in a perfectly ordinary house with a perfectly ordinary attached garage. The odds were high he also would have a perfectly ordinary toolkit in that garage.

Inspired, Dean grabbed one of the pegs, ignoring its fat smooth length and concentrating on the size of the ball end that would remain outside of his body and the width of the peg at the point it attached. From what he had gathered from the ever garrulous Becky Rosen, the reason it wasn’t particularly more…messy… that an Omegá’s active Flores exposed both passages in an open state was that an Omegárean rectum had multiple internal sphincters.  There was one located at least eight inches inside the passage that had a default setting of being closed tightly to seal his bowels and another located at the rim of the external opening that had a default of being open but then closed to hold any penetrating object in place even before the walls of his rectal passage began to bore down on the invader.

It was the sensation of those walls pulsing against a peg (and presumably a cock) that caused the dual rhythm that sent an Omegá’s orgasmic responses into overdrive.  Dean was pretty certain that a ‘plug’ that sealed his anus without actually penetrating him deeply enough to touch the inside of his passage would not duplicate the effect.  If he could remove the penile portion of the peg, leaving just enough for his ass to hold onto, he would _appear_ to be plugged but wouldn’t suffer the negative effects.

Fortunately, Azazel kept his garage organised enough for Dean to quickly locate a small handsaw and he made quick work of removing all but an inch of the peg until he was left with the desired ‘plug’.  He was careful to sweep up every trace of the activity, even cleaning every tooth of the saw until he was sure no black rubber remained, and then he buried it and the severed peg at the very bottom of the garbage bin.

He returned to the basement before shucking off his gown, shivering a little in the cold air though in view of how fine his clothing was his feeling of chill was as likely to be from nerves as from any genuine change in body temperature.

He undid the harness chain from his waist and willed himself to release the bridle, which he placed carefully on the floor with his folded gown.  Then he concentrated on relaxing his Flores even further, picturing his anal passage in his head to see if he could by will alone encourage the external sphincter to widen further.  It took a couple of false starts, as the sensation felt uncomfortably like the action of, well, taking a dump in reverse. But after what felt like forever but was, in actuality, only a few minutes, he felt his buttocks relax and a flow of air into his rectum that indicated it had worked. Though he was pleased the basement _wasn’t_ fitted with a mirror, at that moment it would have been useful and he regretted not trying this in his bedroom instead because it wasn’t the most natural of movements to try to insert the plug into himself.

Then again, the plan would depend upon him being able to do it so quickly and easily that his deception was never discovered.  He wasn’t even going to trust Sam with the secret. The whole point was going to be to fool Azazel _and_ Sam into believing the illusion he was going to create was true.

Dean’s idea was this:

He accepted that the spanking was unavoidable. What _was_ avoidable was allowing it to become a _sexual_ act.  He could take advantage of the fact that _Sam_ was a virgin. Sam was innocently unaware of most things sexual and almost all things Omegá. Sam had certainly never spanked an Omegá or seen with his own eyes what reaction to expect. Sam also had no idea of what ‘size’ a number six peg should look like.

Azazel wasn’t the only person in the household capable of sleight of hand.

Working with Sam’s ignorance and the fact that Azazel would not be present in the basement during the time that Sam ‘attended his needs’ it would be theoretically possible for Dean to create an illusion that all those _needs_ were being met without even _Sam_ realising it wasn’t true. If Dean played it right, Sam would leave the basement thoroughly convinced he’d performed a stellar role as Dean’s Alpha and would therefore report the same to Azazel.  Meanwhile Dean could ensure that nothing happened to trigger Sam’s rage.

Because Dean was able to open his Flores at will, he would be able to let Sam colour his buttocks sufficiently but then stop the spanking long before it ever caused him to genuinely lose control simply by _telling_ Sam he was completely ready to mount the stool. Thus Sam would never be faced with the actual sight of his Flores opening or the vision of slick dripping from him in invitation.

Dean would cross the room, seat _himself_ on the stool, opening his Flores only when it was absolutely necessary to do so and, from that position, Sam would only witness the proof that it _had_ opened. Then Dean would hold himself in an upright position long enough to insert the plug (which he would secrete under the stool) into his ass before letting himself tip forward to reveal the illusion he was fully dually plugged as per the legal requirements.

At that point, with only a single number three peg inside himself, Dean would actually be able to genuinely allow himself a discrete orgasm or two before releasing himself and climbing off the stool. 

Then Sam would report that Dean had been thoroughly spanked and pegged, undoubtedly feeling proud of himself for being such a ‘good’ Alpha, and Dean’s reddened ass would stand as evidence it had happened in exactly the way that Sam _thought_ it had.

“Take that, you bag of Dicks,” Dean told the All-Father smugly. “I might have been _designed_ as a sex toy but I sure as hell don’t have to act like one.”

 


	65. Chapter Sixty One

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that going to school on Lunesday was the hardest thing he'd ever done.

Maybe not the hardest thing he'd ever suffered; that prize went equally to the day in the hospital lecture theatre and the day he'd woken to discover he'd been mutilated. Neither was it the worst thing he'd ever experienced; that particular award was given to that last day in Bobby's house when three of the only four people he truly loved lost their lives.

Yet, hands down, walking into the High School as an Omegá was the worst thing he had actually _done._

There was a large part of him that had wanted to simply point blank refuse to go. He was pretty sure it would have been illegal to manhandle him and force him to leave the house. Whilst his body seemed to be fair game sexually it was considered surprisingly sacrosanct in other situations. Being an Omegá in Beta society was a study in contradictions. Dean supposed it was because of the mish-mash of laws that ruled an Omegá's life. Most of the unrepealed Pack Laws judged him untouchable and stressed that none could either harm him or allow harm to occur to him.

It was the latter part of the laws that the Betas had twisted to their purposes to enable his abuse under the guise of preventing him from suffering the 'harm' of remaining sexually unsatisfied. Just as the Pack Law that said he could not be criticised for choosing not to wear clothes had gradually transformed into a law that stated he shouldn't wear clothes at all. And, as Azazel said, _that_ was done under the guise of ensuring he was not suffering the harm of being 'neglected'.

Over the weekend, he'd spent a fair amount of time on Sam's computer looking up the details of the law as it pertained to Omegáres. He wasn't greatly wiser for the experience. The laws varied from state to state depending on precedents, politics and the prevalence of the Ablest church. In states where the Church of Abel was strongest, the rule of law was applied with a particularly heavy hand. Were he still in Kansas, for instance, he wouldn't be allowed to wear the gowns Daniel had provided at all, regardless of how much offence the local Packs took at the rejection of the gifts.

In Texas he wouldn't be attending school at all since he'd be sitting in a rut house with a queue of Alphas standing in line to mount him.

In California, he'd be able to wear Beta clothes but would still be expected to consider himself available to bend over for any horny teen Alpha who asked him to drop his pants.

If he looked at it objectively, there were far worse places in American Beta Land to be a teenage Omegá than in Sioux Falls. But that was cold comfort. It was kind of like breaking a leg but being expected to be grateful he hadn't broken _two_ legs. The basic fact remained that it wasn't unreasonable not to want to break any leg at all.

But, of course, Azazel had made it abundantly clear to him that refusing to leave the house would inevitably lead to questions over Sam's status as his guardian. Nobody was pretending his attendance at school had anything to do with any perceived requirement for him to receive an education. Apparently, Omegáres had no need for one. It wasn't as though he'd ever be expected or allowed to have a job. An Omegá's only 'job' was to open his legs on demand for his Alpha and then, later, to do the same for his Primá so he could churn out a series of little Primá pups until such day as his womb gave up the ghost. What happened then was still in doubt. Either he'd remain as an honoured queen like Daniel or be 'disappeared' and replaced by a younger more fertile replacement. That, apparently depended on the level of dickishness of his Primá.

Though maybe after enough years of leg spreading and pup producing, an Omegá would welcome the opportunity to be set aside and left in peace.

Regardless of his ultimate fate, the fact remained that the Betas cared less whether an Omegá was educated so Dean's mandatory attendance at school was clearly just intended to be another way to manipulate Sam.

What made that so obvious was that Dean would no longer be issued his own timetable but would simply attend Sam's classes with him. Neither would Dean be issued schoolbooks or homework or be expected or even allowed to actually participate in lessons. He was expected to simply follow Sam around, sit with him and look 'pretty' and demonstrate constantly how obedient and 'happy' he was under Sam's guardianship.

Azazel took the drive to school to remind both Dean and Sam of the consequences of failure to behave appropriately.

"Please attempt to remember, Dean, that everything you do and say will ultimately be a reflection on Sam. I appreciate you will face the urge to respond angrily to any perceived insult or slight but be aware that raising your voice like a shrew will simply lead to the school board insisting you are gagged for future attendance."

"I don't want Dean to wear a gag," Sam protested sulkily, his eyes flaring red. "He's my Omegá. Why should anyone else be able to tell me to gag him?"

Dean tried not to react to the fact Sam's primary objection was the insult to himself rather than to Dean. Whenever the red luminance flashed, Dean understood it was the 'Alpha' speaking, not his little brother and arguing with the Alpha just empowered it further. Dean suspected there were a finite number of times the Alpha lurking under Sam's skin would reveal itself in brief flashes before it took over completely.

"Because a shrewish, verbally combative Omegá is clearly going to be seen as an 'unhappy' Omegá and it is you, Sam, who will be judged to be at fault for Dean's unhappiness," Azazel pointed out smoothly. "A gag isn't worn to prevent an Omegá from verbally protesting. That's just an obvious side-effect. A gagged Omegá is a happy Omegá simply because Omegáres so evidently enjoy being gagged."

"I believe you mean that a gagged Omegá is a sexually compliant one," Dean said, his voice even and deliberately non-shrewish.

Azazel's eyes narrowed but he replied in an equally calm voice. "Naturally, that is why gagging makes an Omegá happy. Let's not pretend otherwise. It's important that Sam never forgets that your primary imperative is to be impregnated and that you can't be blamed for the way that your body demands that its needs are met. I would hate for a situation to arise where Sam ever feels there is anything unnatural about your needs, Dean."

Sam's eyes blazed hotter and his teeth bared in a snarl. "I'm not a stupid immature pup, Mr Al'asfar. I know perfectly well that Dean can't help being a bit of a slut. You told me that as long as I did that...spanking stuff... he wouldn't make a fool of himself in public but if he's wearing a gag he probably won't be able to control himself and that's not fair on Dean or on me."

"That's exactly my point," Azazel countered. "Gagged Omegáres can't keep their legs shut so, since you don't want to share Dean, let's all endeavour to prevent that unfortunate situation from occurring." He offered both pups a benign smile.

Dean wanted to burst with fury. He could feel his hand flexing and curling with the urge to punch the sanctimonious grin right off the Beta's face. He couldn't, in that moment, imagine how anyone could traverse the minefield that was his life without inevitably exploding at least one of the hidden traps.

Every instinct he had demanded that he should fight and howl and scream his fury at each and every deliberate insult to his dignity and freedom. Yet reason insisted that resistance was futile. Physically fighting was obviously counterproductive and it seemed that even verbal protests were off the table. Any perceived resistance on his part could easily and legally be countered by measures designed to not only prevent him fighting back but ultimately removing his ability to even want to resist.

The only way to fight was to choose _not_ to fight and thus retain his sanity.

He remembered Daniel's brief mention of the Omegá named Claire, the one so terribly abused that he had apparently lost the ability to ever recover from what he had suffered. Not, apparently, specifically because of the physical damage he had endured but because he had lost his mind in the process.

So that was the key. That was the true gift Daniel had accorded him. Dean knew he had to bend like a reed in the wind of the Betas' assaults on him. He had to let himself go with the out of control flow of the torrential river sweeping him along and just concentrate on keeping his head above water. He had to be seen as compliant. He had to act the part. Because, presumably, if the Betas thought he was broken, they would stop applying the measures that possibly _would_ break him.

The only way he could stop them winning would be by letting them think that they already had.

"I can't imagine wanting any other Alpha," Dean said, offering Sam a shy smile and dipping his eyes in apparent coy embarrassment. "Sam made me feel so good last night that, well, I'll probably spend the day remembering what he did for me instead of thinking about anything else. Especially whenever I'm sitting down."

As though he'd pressed some magic invisible 'Sam' button, the Alpha glow abruptly disappeared from his brother's eyes and Sam's expression relaxed into a beaming, grin as he visibly puffed with pride at Dean's praise. "I really did, didn't I?" he enthused. "I admit I was a bit nervous at first. I mean having an Omegá to take care of is a really huge responsibility like you said, Mr Al'asfar, but I didn't have any of the problems you said I'd probably have convincing Dean to let me help him. I didn't have to employ any of those ways you taught me to convince Dean to accept the care he needs."

Azazel flushed and he looked swiftly in Dean's direction, clearly expecting some explosive reaction to Sam just innocently blurting out that he had been taught ways to manipulate Dean into compliance.

Dean deliberately ignored him, keeping his expression carefully neutral and his tone easy.

"I trust you, Sam," he said. "You're my _Alpha._ "

Sam grinned hugely and squirmed in his seat like a puppy that had just been patted in approval.

Azazel just glowered and remained silent for the remainder of the journey.

It was one thing to decide how to act, another entirely to actually do so. When Azazel parked in the school lot, it took every ounce of Dean's courage to open the door and step out wearing only a flimsy sheer kaftan and a deliberate expression of calm indifference before the waiting eyes of far more pupils than should have been reasonably expected to be hanging around the building that close to the first period bell.

He barely had a moment to fix his composure before he was almost bowled off his feet completely by the impact of a small, red-headed missile barrelling into him and throwing her arms around him in excited welcome.

"Dean, Dean, Dean, Dean," Charlie blubbered. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again. I'm so sorry. So, so godamed sorry about your mom, Dean. I miss her so much. And Bobby. I'm sorry about Bobby too. And I miss them and I missed you. I was so scared. I didn't know what to think when I heard you were in hospital. And I tried to visit you. I camped out in the hospital foyer for days, literally, and not one of the bastards would let me in and they even said you didn't want to see me, but I knew that was bullshit but I just couldn't figure out a way to get past security. And then Sam told me even he wasn't allowed to visit you but that you would be coming back to school. And then we all had the talk last week about you so then I knew it was true."

"What talk?" Dean asked suspiciously.

"Well it was mainly the typical Beta bullshit about Omagáres in general but not all of it was bad," she assured him. "Like we were all told that the school would come down hard on any comments on your clothing, which by the way you are rocking, because you supposedly got them from Ophriel and no one wants to piss him off. Everyone's so scared about what's going to happen with WalCo that no one wants to upset the Pack too. Did you really get this gorgeous thing from Ophriel himself?"

"Actually it was a gift from Daniel," Dean grinned.

"Wow. That's pretty cool and actually makes sense because...well, I've got some stuff to tell you but it's probably better if we talk later," she said, suddenly realising how many people were watching their reunion.

"Do I look okay?" he asked her quietly.

"You look fantastic," she assured him. "I'd wear it myself if I had your legs. Not sure it would have the same effect with my short, stumpy little legs on show. Sure it's a bit revealing but I've seen worse on a red carpet, Dean. Honest. I mean it sucks that you _have_ to wear it but, under the circumstances you actually look pretty darned classy. Weird, but true. Oh, and just so you know, all the other Larpers are completely behind you too, Dean. We've all got your back. We all think you're being treated like shit not being allowed to come back to lessons properly and even Garth told Gordon to fuck off last week when he trash talked you. Of course that got him a black eye but he's wearing it with pride so, whatever anyone else says, don't forget you do have friends here."

"It's Gordon who worries me most," Dean admitted, though the fact the losers were apparently all going to support him was a huge weight off his shoulders.

"Well," Charlie bit her lower lip. "It's not just Gordon who's being a dick. It's all of the Alphas. Jake, Scott and Ansem have presented now, oh and there's a couple of new Alphas who've transferred over in the last fortnight. Pretty suspiciously, obviously, but they've all been told the consequences of touching you without Sam's permission so you've got to think that they'll care more about protecting their own asses than going anywhere near yours."

Dean frowned. "What about Max Miller? You didn't mention him."

Charlie flushed, her face twisting awkwardly. "I thought Sam would have told you about Max. With them being such good friends and all. Though, though, well, maybe he didn't want to upset you or worry you or something because, obviously, Sam's an Alpha too, so I guess you would be, worried, that is. Or upset. Or maybe both..."

"Just tell me," Dean suggested, breaking into her nervous babbling.

"He's dead," she blurted, then looked pretty shocked she'd said it out loud. "He...well he supposedly did a Metatron on Joanna Bailey and...and, well, no one knows what happened for sure because the police had 'no leads' or some such bullshit, but Max was found with his head staved in a couple of days later and obviously everyone knows it was Roger Bailey and his friends who did it but no one's saying anything and it's a real shitstorm because Max was actually really sweet on Joanna and she, well, she really liked him and claims that although they did get it on, it was consensual and just got a bit rough because of his rage but that she wanted him to do it and didn't want him using a brothel instead because he was her boyfriend. She's calling her Sire a murderer and a bigot who just didn't want her to marry an Alpha."

"Shit," Dean breathed.

"Yeah, and that's probably why Sam didn't tell you. I mean it's bad enough being an Omegá around here but, somehow, maybe it's kind of more dangerous to be an Alpha, you know?"

"I do know," Dean agreed. "I'm starting to believe that the only thing that will ever please the Betas is if the other designations disappear completely."

"Well, not all Betas," Charlie corrected. "We aren't all total assholes. Me and Garth, Cassie, Kevin, Dorothy, Aidan and Krissy are all Team Dean."

Because the bell sounded, they couldn't talk any more. Charlie scurried off and Dean followed a slightly grumpy Sam who had been impatiently waiting for him to the first class of the day.

By mid morning Dean was already sick to the back teeth with the teachers in his school, each who took his inclusion in the class to move the lesson off plan and redirect it to address the Dean-sized elephant in the room. It was beginning to feel horribly like a 'bring your pet to school' day.

But he was proud of himself for coolly maintaining an air of complete indifference to the entire proceedings. He supposed, like anything new and different, he would only remain the focus of attention for a brief while before something shinier came along to grab the public interest. So he sat there and tried to tune out everything being said, and the fact that Sam would respond to the most outrageous comments with a growl of offence did somewhat temper people's enthusiasm somewhat for deliberate Dean-baiting.

It was only in the third period that he was put fully on the spot by a teacher, Ms Abbadon, who was new to the school and seemed even more fascinated by him than his fellow students. She decided a question and answering session would be the best way to settle everyone's curiosity.

"Perhaps, Sam, you'd let your Omegá to speak to us directly. Unless, of course, you don't allow him to talk to anyone else? I do understand you have that legal right."

Sam, naturally, was totally blind sided by the question and just looked at Dean in panic, clearly unsure whether Dean wanted to protect him from the questioning altogether or assert Dean's right to speak as he pleased.

So Dean took over, offering the teacher a charming smile. "I'd be happy to speak to you," he lied.

"I understand you concealed your designation previously. How does it feel to have that deception revealed? It seems, from what your fellow pupils are saying, that the main objection being raised is that you deceived them by pretending to be a Beta. So my question is this: Do you feel guilty for having misled everyone up until now?"

_Wow. What a bitch._

Dean breathed deeply, waiting a moment to gather his thoughts before answering.

"I am Omegá. Concepts of guilt or innocence are not applicable. An Omegá is not accountable in law."

Abaddon frowned with apparent irritation. "But surely truth is a necessary moral concept, not merely a legal one? Or are you suggesting an Omegá has no moral responsibility?"

"I think you're confusing morals with ethics, Ms Abaddon. Whether or not an Omegá chooses to follow rules prescribed by the society in which they live is no indicator of their personal code of morality. Omagáres are not bound by ethics. That is a fundamental truth set in stone by both Pack Law and Beta Law. Since my personal morality does not adhere to the idea that something as personal as my designation should be a topic of interest to anyone else, the fact I chose not to discuss the issue was not a deception. I hold that my designation is simply none of your business. I would respectfully suggest the fact you clearly feel differently and believe you have the right to impose that view on me despite the law that states I am not accountable is an indicator of _your_ lack of moral responsibility not mine."

Despite his carefully measured words, he wouldn't have been surprised if the teacher had responded angrily to his statement. He was surprised, therefore, when she gave him a nod of firm approval.

"Well said, Dean. You are absolutely correct. Whilst the fact of your designation is quite apparent now to all in this school, it is and never has been, frankly, any of our business. Perhaps that can now settle the matter and we can all return our attention to the purpose of this lesson which is a discussion of the geological formation of the Andes, not the designation of Dean Winchester."

Wow. So not actually a bitch after all. Which begged the question of why Abaddon had opened the discussion only to then draw Dean in to effectively shut it down so quickly. He had a sudden suspicion that the presence of the new teacher in the school wasn't a completely random co-incidence. Although he had nothing but his instinct to rely on, Dean had the sudden impression he wasn't as alone as he'd thought. Was it possible that Daniel had planted Abaddon in the school to help him?

It was a far-fetched idea but one that rang true in his gut.

It was a cheering thought and one that got him though to the lunch bell without letting the constant unwelcome attention driven him to break character.

Fortunately, Sam didn't need a lot of persuading at lunch time to let Dean sit with Charlie rather than himself.

"I'm not asking to go off without you, Sam. I just want to sit and catch up with Charlie for a while. You can see us from here and make sure no one comes up to bother me. It's going to be easier for you to protect me if you sit here and keep your eye on the whole room."

He was glad he'd managed to persuade Sam from sitting with them when Charlie cut straight to the chase.

"So, I've been going out of my mind worrying about you, of course, and since I couldn't actually do anything for you about the whole hospital thing, I figured the next best way I could help you is work out what the heck is going on in your genetics. You know, the whole your Sire is an Alpha weirdness. And I actually think I've figured it out.

"Obviously a lot of the records aren't online so without actually visiting the physical archives it's hard to investigate back more than a couple of generations but what I have been able to discover just with a bit of effort and my indisputable google-fu is that your and Sam's designations might be a complete genetic improbability in any normal situation but in your specific family tree it would have probably been odder if you had been born Betas.

"Your Sire, John, didn't know anything about his family because he was orphaned when he was less than a year old, brought up in foster care and never took the time to investigate his origins. If he had, he would have discovered his Sire, Henry Winchester, was recorded by the census as being an Alpha."

"My grandsire was an Alpha too?"

"Hell, yeah. And that's not all. Henry's birth certificate lists his father as being a John Winchester from Albany. The census in Albany lists that John Winchester also as an Alpha. But that isn't even the best bit. I found a birth certificate for a Charles Winchester, Henry's brother. Your great grandsire John had two recorded pups."

"Let me guess, Charles was an Alpha too?" Dean asked.

"Well, that's the thing. Charles Winchester simply disappeared before he was old enough for any presentation to be established so no records of his designation exist."

"Then he could have been a Beta."

Charlie rolled her eyes impatiently. "Yes, he could have been a Beta who just upped and ran away from home at fourteen for no reason whatsoever, but you and I both know there's a really good much more logical reason for a pup to disappear from Beta Land at that age.

"Besides, seriously, Dean. I'm not just clutching at straws here. You know the story about Chuck Sethson just growing up in a Beta Land family completely unknown to the authorities and then taken to Pack Land by an Alpha Guardian who refused to accept payment for him? Well, as far as I can tell, that Alpha Guardian was Henry Winchester."

Dean blinked slowly as he absorbed the significance of Charlie's words.

"You're saying Chuck is Charles Winchester?"

"Well, think about it. Charles Winchester, of which not a single picture appears to exist, just happened to mysteriously disappear at the age of fourteen and a half and then his brother, Henry Winchester, who amazingly seems to have been an Alpha, despite their father the previous John Winchester also being an Alpha, somehow comes into possession of an Omegá named 'Chuck' who is somewhat different and a little more...masculine, shall we say, in appearance than an average Omegá and Henry takes him safely, straight into a Pack Land and won't let himself be paid for doing it. But of course he wouldn't want payment. Your grandsire was clearly just a good guy doing the best thing for his little brother. So that means that Caine's Bride, Chuck Sethson, is your Great Aunt."


	66. Chapter Sixty Two

All things considered, Dean felt pretty sorry for Alphas in general.

Charlie was completely right that, despite appearances to the contrary, Omegáres had the far better end of the stick. Sure, as an Omegá ,Dean could be humiliated and raped and even mutilated and none of those were by any means minor or acceptable things but they were, ultimately, survivable things. Whatever godforsaken shit he might have to suffer it was absolutely guaranteed that he would emerge on the other side of his experience maybe not necessarily in one piece but definitely, categorically, alive. And, as Daniel said, Omegáres lived very long lives. Lives long enough, maybe to if not forget their sufferings at least learn to place them firmly away into a part of their personal history and move on into the future unencumbered by their weight.

Which was definitely more than could be said for an Alpha.

An Alpha’s long term survival in Beta Land was far from assured and they were raised to believe that they were unwelcome to join the Packs, might even be killed by the Packs for entering their territory, so they saw no possibility of escape to anything better. Dean definitely didn't believe the Packs were likely to kill an Alpha. Daniel had made it absolutely clear that Sam was welcome, after all. But the average Alpha was unlikely to be visited by an Omegá queen to clarify the situation so it was hardly surprising they erred on the side of caution and remained in Beta Land despite their poor odds of surviving there too.

Dean didn’t believe that survival was absolutely, fundamentally the be all and end all. There was no victory to be had in the notion of survival at any cost. There had to be a certain level of quality of life to make it worthwhile at all. But Dean didn’t have any romantic notions that _any_ life was ever perfect. It was a series of trials in which only an individual could decide, when weighing the scales between suffering and pleasure, whether their own continuing existence was, overall, balanced in the favour of choosing to live.

He could conceive of situations when the balance would tip so dramatically in the other direction that the idea of death would become the favoured option. If, for instance, he was facing the idea of remaining in Beta land for his entire life he knew, realistically, he would consider it better that his life be as short as humanly possible to achieve. Maybe suicide wasn't a concept he could ever seriously consider but he would sure as hell engineer a situation where he would go down fighting rather than submit to the indignity of surrender.

But that wasn’t something he bothered to dwell on because it was not even remotely possible. Even though there were places in the world where Omegáres were held until twenty one (and there were rumours that the Texans were attempting to pass local laws to follow that practice in future themselves) there wasn’t a single Beta-led society that dared to hold the liberty of an Omegá even one moment longer. Whether the handing over of the Omegá to a Pack was perceived then to be a surrender or a sale, the fact remained that it was inevitable and immutable.

And, although Dean had no cast-iron guarantees that life was a heck of a lot better for an Omegá in Pack Land, having met Daniel he was pretty darned certain that it _was._ Dean’s only doubt about embracing Pack life was the idea of mating a Primá and, according to Daniel, that wasn’t even something that he would be forced to do. If he wanted to remain unmated, that was also a right he would be accorded by the Packs.

Knowing that, and personally believing the Primáres were generally as dickish as the Betas in their own way, the only reason Dean was even still leaving the ‘possibility’ of choosing to mate on the table was the fact he was pretty certain the time would come when he would no longer be able to resist the idea of whelping a pup. That was the one facet of his biological imperative that didn’t actually bother him. He couldn’t imagine anything better than having a pup or two of his own. He just didn’t necessarily want to mate in order to achieve it.

“Do you think an Omegá could be artificially inseminated?” he asked Charlie, as they waited in the library for the rest of the losers to arrive.

It had, perhaps a little too ’co-incidentally’, been Ms Abaddon who had ‘accidentally’ overhead Sam and Dean having a quiet but rather intense discussion over whether it would be appropriate for Dean to attend Sam’s after-school Advanced Placement Class considering the number of Alphas who would be in the room. Sam hadn’t needed much convincing by Abaddon that it was ‘safer’ to leave Dean in the library with his Beta friends, under her watchful eye. Though she said she didn’t doubt Mr Al’asfar’s ability to control his students, she said that perhaps it was better not to put him in the position in the first place. Sam had grabbed Abaddon’s offer with wholehearted relief and charged off to his class alone.

Dean didn’t imagine Azazel would be particularly pleased with the decision but maybe he’d let the Beta duke that one out with Abaddon herself. The teacher in question hadn’t imposed her presence on them. She had quietly, and pointedly, seated herself at the far end of the library, near the entrance doors, so that she could monitor admittance into the room without being close enough to overhear them and had simply settled down to mark papers.

She was _definitely_ working for Daniel, he decided.

“I’m not sure,” Charlie replied thoughtfully. “It certainly wouldn’t be a straightforward procedure. Even if it was possible to get hold of a Primá's sperm which would be pretty difficult since they only knot inside an Omegá, you have to wonder whether an unbonded Omegá would even be capable of releasing an egg for fertilisation. As far as I understand it, the breaking of a mating bond stops an Omegá releasing eggs so I’d assume it’s the forming of a bond that actually starts the process. What do you think?” She addressed the comment to Kevin who had arrived midway though her speaking and had simply plopped himself down on a chair at their table with nothing more than a casual nod at Dean as though it hadn’t been several months and a few somewhat life-changing events since their last meeting. He did then, admittedly, cast more than a few surreptitious glances in Dean’s direction but Dean appreciated his attempt at discretion enough to forgive him his understandable curiosity.

Kevin shrugged. “I guess if Omegá reproduction mirrors Beta reproduction, the eggs are sitting there to be harvested. Theoretically, someone could remove an egg, fertilise it and put it where it needs to be regardless of whether the Omegá was bonded or not. That’s what the fertility clinics do for Betas who have problems conceiving.”

“As if the world needs even more Betas,” Dean grumbled.

“Well, I agree,’ Charlie said. “Given the population levels of the world and the problems of famine in places like Africa, you’d think the last thing we need are clever ways to make even more Beta babies. But then, I guess without Betas there wouldn’t be Alphas or Omegáres anyway, so unless someone came up with a way to make more Alphas and Omegáres without necessarily creating the tens of thousands of Betas required statistically to create the odds of generating one of them, there’s always going to be a hugely disproportionate number of Betas.”

“Hence the reason we’re all basically fucked,” Kevin said. “As the population keeps growing, the numbers of Betas will eventually grow so great that war with the Packs will become an inevitability because the Betas will refuse to allow the Packs to continue claiming ownership of all the land. No society is ever going to be happy to continue indefinitely in a state of occupation.”

“Well the same position could be taken by the Packs, considering that it’s their land being occupied by the Betas really,” Dean pointed out.

“Either way, it’s all going to end in tears,” Kevin predicted grimly.

“What is?” Dorothy asked, joining them and sitting a little closer to Charlie than strictly necessary.

Dean raised an eyebrow at Charlie and she shrugged and grinned in unrepentant confirmation of his suspicion.

“We were discussing the inevitability of an American war between the Free Betas and the Packs,” Kevin said.

“Always assuming a war between Canada and America doesn’t happen first,” Dorothy replied. “The President is absolutely spitting about Canada’s new trade deal with China. No one knows the actual details but it seems some private arrangement’s been made with the Emperor and now China has raised tariffs on everything arriving on their shores except Canadian imports. Looks like there’s going to be a lot of Chinese eating poutine and maple syrup for the foreseeable future. Seriously though, that makes it really likely that the Confederacy are going to make the decision to join Canada.”

“I don’t get it,” Dean confessed. “I thought the Confederacy had moved back under Pack Law, so why would they choose to join a Beta-led government like Canada?”

“I’m not sure that Canada has been truly what we’d consider a Free Beta society for over a decade,” Charlie said. “The louder the Church of Abel gets in America, the less the Canadians like the message it’s espousing. The Canadians are basically socialists and Michael Sethson has been winning a war of attrition by spending shedloads of Pack money on social improvement programs for the Free Betas. You’d think that giving them everything they need to survive without the Packs would make them more independent but instead it means the general perception of the Packs is a really positive one over there. Although the independent government of Canada is formed of Free Betas, not one of those elected politicians rode a ticket based on anything other than maintaining a good relationship with the Canadian Packs. They know which side their bread is buttered. Even this deal with China was supposedly one brokered by the Packs for some personal reason and the Betas are just riding the wave of general goodwill.”

“My mom says that the Confederacy have been promised some kind of political agreement whereby they maintain the independence to set their internal laws at local level and, since there is a less marked difference between Pack Law and Canadian Beta Law, there shouldn’t be too many conflicts of interest anyway,” Kevin said.

“Obviously there are some pockets of Ablests in Canada,” Dorothy admitted. “There are Beta Supremacist bigots everywhere. But in Canada the voice of moderation prevails. It’s difficult to be a raving xenophobic racist asshole without being rude and Canadians do tend to prefer being polite as a rule.”

~

Dean Winchester had only been out of hospital for four days but that had been long enough, Azazel considered grimly, for nearly two decades of careful planning on his part to seemingly have come to diddly-squat.

He’d almost choked when Sam had arrived at the after school class without his brother, blithely announcing that Dean was going to spend the time with his friends in the library until it was time for his lift home. And because, apparently, some stupid new interfering bitch of a teacher had taken it upon herself to offer her services as ‘chaperone’, Azazel couldn’t conceive of a single argument to convince Sam that his brother would be better off at his side instead of safely kept away from a room full of Alphas.

Azazel therefore had been left with a room full of randy Alpha teens for no purpose whatsoever. He’d wasted three drops of his precious limited stock of artificial pheromones to turn the room into a den of frustrated Alpha hormones and now he didn’t even have the Omegá to dangle in front of them like a particularly juicy piece of forbidden fruit.

Not that three single drops, spread around the room by an electronic incense diffuser, would have been enough to get Dean thrown over a desk and mounted in quick succession. Dean hadn't been sufficiently primed yet to respond correctly to a strange Alpha's interest and was still far more likely to fight being mounted than open his legs in happy invitation.

Although that wasn't necessarily the absolute given he'd previously assumed. Azazel was shocked that Dean had not only accepted a spanking from his brother the night before but had then, apparently, leapt onto the mounting stool voluntarily and shoved a peg into his _own_ ass, suggesting the hospital had been far more effective than Azazel had believed in waking Dean's innate sexuality and that had definitely scuppered his own plans that Dean should instead be dragged kicking and screaming through every stage of his evolving presentation by his brother.

Against all odds and expectation, it turned out Dean was a naturally enthusiastic slut after all. Which, whilst ordinarily a good thing in an Omegá was, for Azazel's purposes, absolutely the last thing he needed.

But, regardless, Azazel hadn’t been intending the class that day to end in anything as dramatic as Dean getting a cock up his ass anyway, regardless of whether or not he welcomed it.

Since Max Miller’s unfortunate and unplanned demise, Azazel had been far more cautious in his handling of his Alphas as god-forbid he should lose them to the swift hand of legal retribution for mounting Dean without Sam’s express agreement even if Dean was in a surprisingly receptive mood. There was only one Alpha that Azazel was interested in disposing of completely and he wasn’t a member of the Advanced Placement Class anyway.

No, Azazel wanted simply to slowly and gradually build all the young Alphas’ perception of Dean as being someone completely irresistible. He needed them all to see him as preferable to a Beta girl, rather than simply a convenient substitute for one. Without access to a rut house situation where the Alphas would simply have been offered Dean as their only option, Azazel now had the uphill battle of instead convincing them that an Omegá was what they actually _preferred_.

The Packs would never punish an Alpha for acting directly under the influence of rut rage. Nothing Sam ever did himself to Dean would ever be likely to be subject to Pack Law, even if Dean later complained about it, so from that point of view it didn't really matter that Dean seemed to suddenly be so surprisingly sexually responsive to Sam anyway. Azazel reluctantly accepted that even if Dean spent the next three years being a complete slut for Sam's cock it wouldn't make any real difference, except for making his job of corrupting Sam more difficult to achieve.

The only way Azazel could engineer the particular situation Lucifer required was if it could be proven, conclusively, that Sam had, on multiple occasions, made a conscious, reasoned decision to allow his brother to be mounted by _other_ Alphas.

And, realistically, even if it would be better (and more dramatic for trial purposes) if Dean objected to that additional Alpha attention happening, it didn't really matter, legally, one way or the other whether Dean wanted to bounce on those cocks or not. Sam would still be seen as the guilty party for putting Dean in that position in the first place. As Dean's Alpha Guardian, Sam would be held accountable for every single time Dean was mounted by any Alpha other than himself, even if those Alphas had the excuse of rut rage for doing it. Even if Dean consented to the mounting, the Packs would see the situation differently. Dean's consent would be seen as no more valid than that of an Omegá in a rut house. It would be judged that he had been manipulated into that consent and the blame for that manipulation would be lain firmly at Sam's feet.

And the only way Azazel could ensure that happened was to create the same kind of crushing peer pressure on Sam that the military academies had learned to wield so well. It would be Sam’s Alpha pride and his need to embrace the ‘false-pack’ security offered him by his fellow Alphas that would lead him down the path to his own destruction.

The Advanced Placement Class was a ‘Pack’. It had been created to feed the instinctive hunger of the young disenfranchised teen Alphas to belong to a Pack structure. It even had Beta girls, like Lilith and Ruby, to create a cohesive genuine pack-like structure and, of course, Ruby was his special ace-in-the-hole, who would so perfectly divert Sam’s own Alpha desire away from his brother. Azazel didn’t want Sam fucking Dean. Well, no more than _necessary_ anyway to sufficiently overcome any initial illusion Sam had that Dean’s cunt was sacrosanct. But as soon as Sam got over any issue with Dean being fucked at all, Azazel needed him to swiftly move his own sexual interest towards Ruby therefore freeing Dean’s cunt for more useful purposes.

But of course, the only way to make sure that happened as planned was if the other teen Alphas were eagerly waiting for their opportunity to jump on Dean when the option was presented to them.

At least time was on Azazel’s side. He had the best part of three years to succeed in his plans.

He just hadn’t expected the whole thing to be such an uphill battle from the very start.

So, maybe, his best move would be to back off completely for a while. Let Dean have enough rope to hang himself. Allow the Omegá to become so confident he had ‘won’ Sam's complete and utter devotion that he stopped jumping at shadows. Ease off a bit on Sam’s dosage so that the pup showed a lot less Alpha and Dean stopped being so very, cleverly, careful. As long as Dean stayed in a state of hyper-wariness it would be difficult for Azazel to get anywhere.

Perhaps spending a little more time building the Alphas into a loyal ‘Pack” instead would pay off more dividends in the end.

Time was on his side.

A few more months of building Sam’s relationship with himself and the rest of the ‘Pack’ and, by the time he deliberately tipped Sam into the ‘rage’, the pup would react exactly the way Azazel needed him to.

And Dean wouldn’t even see it coming.


	67. Chapter Sixty Three

Improbably, yet inarguably, over the next year Dean's life settled into a routine that, whilst not perfect, was surprisingly ordinary in all but a couple of respects.

Though she never made any point of approaching Dean or speaking to him directly since that single first day in class, Abaddon continued her habit of doing her marking in the library on the days when Azazel ran his Advanced Placement Classes, meaning that Dean was free to hang out with the Losers. It was those times that he clung onto whenever anything threatened his equilibrium. For a few hours every week he thrived in being treated as an absolutely 'normal' person. Although the Losers, like any group of young people, had their occasional fall-outs and shifting internal loyalties and differences of opinion, no one ever once spoke of Dean's designation as anything derogatory. They frequently referred to it but simply as a fact of life. Nothing more significant than the colour of his eyes or his hair.

Dean's designation was accepted by his friends as just one facet of what made him 'Dean', no more, no less, and it was the very fact none of them felt awkward about mentioning it that made him so comfortable with them. Had his designation been considered as something 'unmentionable' it would have loomed like a huge elephant in the room, casting a constant shadow over their interactions.

Attending classes with Sam was, inarguably, incredibly boring given that Dean was not allowed to participate in class but even that wasn't significantly different than the time before his presentation had become generally known, since Dean had never particularly been interested in demonstrating much participation in classes even back when he was allowed to do so. Dean had always found school boring, so the additional constraint on his behaviour merely added a layer of extra boredom to a situation that had always been somewhat of a trial anyway.

Even living with Azazel Al'asfar had become a routine that had become remarkably mundane. As long as the brothers disappeared into the basement together for an hour or two every evening and Dean emerged later with flushed cheeks (of both varieties) Azazel found no reason to mention Dean's designation at all. On the surface it seemed that the teacher's primary concern genuinely had been whether he and Sam would suffer external criticism due to Dean's behaviour and, because that had not happened, he seemed satisfied to allow the status quo to continue.

Dean didn't make the mistake of letting down his guard and actually 'trusting' the Beta but when you knew you were literally living with the enemy, it was exhausting to feel constantly on guard so he definitely appreciated the fact that most of his interaction with Azazel was limited to his lifts to and from school and their shared meals and the rest of the time Dean was left very much to his own devices. He consequently spent more hours than was probably healthy playing on-line games with the losers from the sanctuary of his own bedroom and thus avoiding Azazel altogether.

For all Azazel had stated he wanted his house to feel like their 'home’, he discouraged both the brothers from ever inviting friends to visit them at the house. His reasoning was the eminently reasonable point that most of Sam's friends were Alphas, which would be uncomfortable for Dean. He said that it wasn't fair for him to ban Sam's friends and still allow Dean's to come around. That sounded plausible on the surface but wasn't fair at all in reality since Dean wasn't allowed to go to his friend's houses either because going out and visiting friends alone was something Azazel, supported by the treacherous Sam, put his foot down on 'for Dean's own safety', and so he consequently spent a lot of time alone except for his cyber socialisations, and Sam spent a lot of time elsewhere entirely.

For a pup who had always struggled with social interactions when he was younger, Sam had evolved into a surprisingly popular teen of late. Dean had expected Max's death to curtail Sam's social life as the two pups had been largely inseparable the year before. Instead, Sam seemed to have branched out into befriending all of the members of the Specs and, except for making a point of attending to Dean's supposed needs with an almost religious dedication every evening, Sam spent all of the rest of his free time out of the house completely, embracing his new popularity and abandoning his brother completely.

Despite everything seemingly playing out the way Dean had hoped it would, with his brother's attention to him limited to the performance of a simple 'routine' that oddly felt no more personal than if Sam had a puppy that needed to be walked, fed and groomed every day as part of the necessary responsibility of ownership, there was something unsettling about the very normality of such a bizarre interaction.

Most early evenings would start with a visit to the basement. Sam would give Dean a brisk, efficient and oddly impersonal spanking and then would settle down to do his homework whilst Dean would spend an hour or so on the mounting stool. Then they would return upstairs, eat dinner with Azazel with absolutely no verbal reference to what had just occurred, and Dean would then go to his room and Sam would go out and rarely return home before midnight.

A few times Dean had suggested to Sam that maybe he could stay at home instead and they could do something together, like brothers. Or even go out somewhere together since Dean had long since adjusted to dressing as an Omega in public and was practically dying of boredom and anything would be better than another evening watching television or playing online games.

Increasingly, his requests for a bit more of Sam's time were met with rolled eyed frustration and, finally, a snide inquiry of whether he'd failed to spank him sufficiently hard and did they need to return to the basement?

When Dean had bitten his tongue enough to speak civilly, he'd attempted to point out that it was perfectly normal for brothers to hang out together outside of 'basements'.

"God, Dean, you're so needy. Is that an Omegá thing?" Sam had snapped, late apparently for a 'date' with Ruby.

That was the last time he pleaded for Sam to stay home.

Week by week, month by month, Dean could feel a chasm gradually growing between the brothers as though the only connection between them was Sam's obligation to curtail his social life just long enough to attend to Dean's legal needs. Whilst Sam never actually complained about the time in the basement, and seemed to retain a pride in actually having an Omegá, given the way he clearly enjoyed strutting around school with Dean at his heels, Dean definitely had the sense that Sam now saw him primarily as an Omegá, rather than as a brother, and that even ownership of an Omega was apparently as much of a burden as it was a pleasure.

And, sadly, what seemed to have caused that rift to open in the first place was Dean presenting Sam with the evidence Charlie had gathered about the Winchester family tree.

Instead of being as pleased as Dean to see the proof that they were, absolutely, true flesh and blood brothers contrary to expectation, Sam had greeted the knowledge with a weak smile followed by an increasing effort to spend as little private time with Dean as possible.

Which proved, Dean supposed, that Charlie's research had definitely literally saved his ass.

It was just sad that the moment Sam's personal morality had kicked in to dismiss Dean as a potential object of sexual interest, Sam appeared largely to have lost interest in him altogether as an actual 'person'.

Oddly, that disinterest seemed to have had an equally dampening effect on the emergence of his Alpha as it was extremely rare over the next few months for him to manifest any of the tell-tale Alpha luminescence that had previously been so prevalent.

So, obviously, it was a good thing that Dean had put Sam straight. Dean had achieved exactly what he had set out to do. He had kept their relationship platonic, had dampened Sam's Alpha and had headed off an impending sexual interest that even Sam hadn't been consciously aware of. Yet, disturbingly, in the absence of that sexual interest it had sadly become evident that from Sam's point of view the fact that they were brothers, _family_ , didn't seem to matter quite as much to him as much as it mattered to Dean.

"Do you think it's because I'm Omegá?" he plaintively asked Charlie. "I mean, maybe it's me being weird. Maybe Sam's the normal one. Perhaps it's more usual for brothers to be kind of indifferent to each other and maybe it's just the Omegá in me that thinks family should be so much more than just sharing a house together."

"I don't know," she said. "I don't have any siblings. I'd like to think that if I did have one they would be my bestie but, who knows? I do think it's quite usual for teen siblings to do their own thing, though. I guess, if Sam didn't particularly have friends of his own when he was younger he maybe is wanting to make up for lost time now. And, maybe, him being an Alpha is part of it too. It probably makes sense that he wants to spend time with other Alphas and that skank Ruby who is always hanging around them."

"Yeah," Dean sighed. "I probably sound like I resent him having a good time but, honestly, it's not that. I'm really pleased he has friends. I just... well, it's stupid I guess but sometimes I think if it were he who were the Omegá he would have taken Daniel up on his offer and just let me fend for myself. I'm not saying he doesn't care about me at all, I just think Sam's priority is Sam."

"I'd like to say it is you just being all Omegáry and hormonal, but I actually think you're right. Sam's always been the centre of his own universe but lots of people are like that, Dean. It doesn't make him a bad person, just a somewhat selfish one, and I'm sure if it really came down to the wire he'd be in your camp. But, yeah, he's basically a bit of a dick and he'd probably still be a bit of a dick if he was a Beta too, but 'cos he's an Alpha he's a bigger dick."

Dean laughed, though he was saddened to find himself agreeing with _some_ of Charlie's assessment. Sam _was_ a bit of a dick. Had been for years really, but only since he'd first entered puberty so Dean was sure he would have stayed a sweet pup if he'd been a Beta and would again be a nice person once he became an adult. He was just going through a particularly dickish teenage period and that was probably purely down to the Alpha shit.

So Dean wasn't going to give up on him.

Dean was _never_  going to give up on him.

But, privately, these days he had to admit he didn’t like him very much, because he was sure that if it were the other way round, if Sam was the Omegá and Dean was the Alpha, then he wouldn’t be abandoning Sam every night to go off and have fun with his friends.

Still, who knows, maybe if he were an Alpha _he_ would be a dick too.

Certainly, the other Alphas in the school gave credence to the idea that the entire Alpha designation should probably be put into a deep cave during pubescence and not let out again until they became adults. Dean felt pretty guilty as a member of one oppressed minority group to make such a sweeping generalisation of another one. But he still thought it was true.

Gordon Walker was, hands down, the absolute worst of them all (which sadly added a little support for the effectiveness of Azazel’s work with the other Alphas to help them remain productive and civilised members of society) because Gordon was completely shameless. Although Gordon was too smart to actually approach Dean, it didn’t stop him constantly being on the periphery of Dean’s life. Somehow at school Dean couldn’t walk down a corridor without Gordon lurking somewhere, just far enough away to stop Sam challenging him, and he would look at Dean and pointedly lick his lips and wink. If he could get away with it, he’d also make a point of rubbing his crotch suggestively. Gordon clearly had never gotten the memo that Beta girls were a better fuck because despite him regularly using his government pass to dip his cock inside well-paid Beta whores, Gordon remained absolutely fascinated by Dean.

Twice, when no teacher had been in the room to witness it, Gordon had taken it a step further, pointedly slipping his right hand down inside his pants to rub himself off directly in Dean’s view.

And, worst of all, Sam (who was sitting right next to Dean) couldn’t possibly have failed to notice it happening but said nothing.

In fact, most worryingly of all, Kevin had mentioned to Dean that Gordon had held several parties at his house that Sam had attended as an invited guest, so it didn’t seem as though Sam had any issue with Gordon at all.

Sam had even found it ‘funny’ that WalCo had presented the school with a ‘generous’ gift of a refitted canteen area with a dedicated table and stool for an Omegá .

“It was meant as a nice gesture, Dean,” he’d said, when Dean had protested. “No one’s making you use it.”

“No. But everyone is looking at it and thinking about the idea of me sitting on it,” Dean had pointed out. “Can’t you see why that might be a problem for me?”

“It’s not like they don’t know you’re an Omegá," Sam replied, with a casual shrug. “You really need to stop being so sensitive about everything.”

Even Charlie, though pretty mad about the blatant message of the ‘gift’, had initially been less than fully understanding of his issue.

"Betas aren't attracted to you sexually," she pointed out sensibly. "They see pegging an Omegá as a medical necessity, not a titilation. So I don’t think any of them are looking at the stool and thinking of you in _that_ way. I think it’s more a curiosity to them that you don’t want to use it.”

"It doesn’t make it any better, Charlie. I’m still being objectified regardless of whether the intention is sexual or not. Besides, the Alphas aren’t looking at the stool and thinking about anything except mounting me. They sit and leer and lick their lips at me. Haven't you seen the way they all sniff around me all the time? Gordon is the worst. He sits near me and fondles himself, gets himself off right in front of me even.“

"But he doesn't touch you, does he? None of them do. If they so much as lay a finger on you without Sam's permission, he can have them publicly whipped or worse. So you're fine. You’re safe. Sam might be a dick but he would never let that happen to you, would he? Sam doesn't...well, he doesn't fuck you himself, does he?"

"No," Dean said.

"So that's alright then. Well, obviously nothing is really ‘alright’ about any of it. You’re right about it being objectification and I can’t pretend I’d be any happier than you in the same situation. But, realistically, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t change what people think. You can only try to rise above it.”

Dean knew she was right but it was easier said than done.

“Has Sam or Mr Al’asfar said anything to you about Shab-e Yalda next Farasday?” Charlie asked him cautiously.

Dean stiffened. “No,” he said slowly. “I assume you know something that I don’t?”

Charlie made a moue of distaste. “I’ve heard some rumours. I don’t know if they’re true or not. That’s why I was wondering if anyone had said anything to you about it.”

“About what?”

“Well since this is the first year in recorded history that Sioux Falls have officially had an Omegá in residence for the date, there’s been talk of putting on a traditional festival to try and bring some revenue to the City. A kind of mummer’s play with Sam playing the All-Father and you playing the Omadonna. I definitely know tickets have gone on sale for _a_ celebration and I heard that the Advanced Placement Class were rehearsing for _a_ play.”

“WHAT?”

“That probably sounded even worse than I meant,” Charlie apologised. “I’m pretty sure they aren’t intending anything X-rated. I mean there’s going to be lots of little pups in the audience so I can’t imagine it’s anything like you’re imagining because of the way I blurted it out. I think it’s just that they want to do the creation story on stage. It used to be a thing, back in the day. Even in the Packs. Probably still is a thing in the Packs, only I guess a Primá would play the All-Father, but I can’t imagine the City Council mean it to be anything explicit because that would be a bit… ewww.”

“Probably explicit enough to have me naked on a stage with Sam pretending to draw shit like the galaxy out of my cunt,” Dean snarled. “I’ve seen the creation illustrations in the Ablest testament, Charlie. I don’t imagine this play would be much different otherwise why would they need a real life Omegá for it?”

“Well, it’s just a rumour,” Charlie said, biting her lower lip nervously. “I’m sure if there was any truth in it, someone would have told you. I mean, they’d need you to learn your lines for the play and all that.”

“I don’t imagine my role would have much of a speaking part,” Dean growled. “I’m going to kill Sam if it’s true. What the fuck is wrong with him? How the hell could he think this is something he shouldn’t tell me about? More to the point, why the hell would he agree to it?”

“Maybe it isn’t true at all. It could just be a rumour,” Charlie said, weakly, but her eyes were dark with worry and, worse, pity and Dean suddenly thought he might actually be physically sick.

“What’s wrong with him, Charlie? What’s happening to him? I thought I had stopped it all going to shit but, somehow, week by week, Sam’s getting weirder and stranger and more remote and it’s got to be something to do with his new ‘friends’ and Azazel. Everything always comes back to Azazel.”

“Are you…um…are you sure this isn’t just…well…just Sam?” she asked carefully.

Dean shook his head furiously.

“No, it’s Azazel. Somehow. I know it’s him. He’s doing something to my brother, Charlie, and it…well, I think it’s something to do with a drug Sam mentioned once that was supposed to stop rut rage in Alphas.”

“I don’t think there’s any such drug, Dean.”

“Nor do I. But there is _a_ drug. Some kind of fake Primá pheremones. And Azazel Al'asfar has it. I know because two years ago, on Shab-e Yalda, Sam stole some of it and it… well, let’s just say I know it does ‘something’," he said, blushing. “And then the Metatron thing happened and the drug never got mentioned again but, now I think about it, that’s when Sam really started getting all weird. There’s something really hinky about Azazel. And… and I just realised something. I can’t believe I never thought about it before. The night my mom… that last night at Bobby’s… me and Sam didn’t call the cops. We didn’t call anyone. Azazel did. He was there. And no one called him. He just arrived and he took over and that’s how he became our foster parent, ‘cos he was the first one there. I don’t know how but maybe he had the house bugged or something. Maybe he was spying on Sam.”

“You think he had something to do with what happened to your mom?”

Dean frowned, then shook his head. “I can’t see how, considering how it all went down. But I do know he was there. Close enough to arrive straight after. So he must have been outside when it happened. Maybe even close enough to stop it happening at all. Fucker.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“What are we going to do?” Charlie asked, her eyes bright with fury.

“I know you’re good with computers, Charlie. You found that stuff on my family and that couldn’t have been easy. Can you… well, can you do the same with Azazel? Find out who he really is? Because High School teachers don’t just get hold of weird drugs and bug people’s houses and fuck with people’s heads.”

“I think all High School teachers fuck with people’s heads,” Charlie joked. “But yeah, of course. If there’s anything on the net, I’ll find it for you. I’ll see if I can find anything out about this drug too.”

“Be careful,” he urged her. “Don’t put yourself at risk. If Azazel’s working for the government, looking into him might ring all kinds of alarm bells.”

“I’ll tip-toe like a ninja,” she promised. “But you too, Dean. If Azazel really is as dangerous as you think, don’t let him know you’re on to him. Otherwise I doubt it will be Sam he’ll be drugging from now on.”

Dean paled significantly. “Shit…oh fucking shit… Becky.”

“Huh? Who’s Becky?”

“There was this doctor in the hospital. She, well, she did some stuff to me and I didn’t…well, I didn’t really stop her. But when she left…as soon as she left, the other doctors and nurses, well they did stuff too but… but they had to try harder, you know? Like something changed and, well, I changed, because of Daniel, so I didn’t realise and maybe that’s all that changed but…but even so, I know it was different. It was harder for them anyway, even despite me physically resisting. Like, like maybe Becky had something like the drug Sam stole and that’s why it was so easy for her.”

“You think this ‘Becky’ used some of Azazel’s drug?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. I’m so goddamned confused, Charlie. Maybe I’m just seeing stuff that isn’t there. Maybe I’m the one who’s screwed up. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

“Is it still considered paranoia if they really are out to get you?” Charlie asked. “Leave it with me, bestie. You just keep your head low and let me see what I can find out.”


	68. Chapter Sixty Four - AKA  The End of the Second Book Of The Omadonna

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've made the decision to deliberately post a much smaller section than usual today, because this is a critical part after which the story jumps quite dramatically in a far darker direction for a while. After some careful reflection, I decided to let this part stand alone and allow its impact to be absorbed before moving on to the next scene.

It is necessary at this point in the story of the Omadonna to reflect on the fact that at this point of the ongoing events, Dean Winchester, fully human and with no access to divine knowlege or prescient foreknowledge had, effectively, already figured out a very large amount of the complex plots swirling around him, simply by the application of his clever brain, common sense and the personal bravery to face even those parts of himself that a lesser mortal might have shied away from acknowledging.

By being brave enough to accept his own flaws and weaknesses, he was more able to identify the flaws of others and to see them for what they really were. Not necessarily evidence of inate evil, or wickedness or overwhelming unalterable badness. Just weaknesses that could be exploited and character flaws that could be understood and even empathised with. By perceiving those who were acting against him as merely flawed humans he could understand the difference between someone being a bad person and a person simply doing bad things.

That was important.

That was crucial.

For instance, he could see the innate difference between action and intent. Perhaps another person would only have seen the outcome of an action, but Dean saw the _intent_ of the action as being of the greatest import.

Dean, it turned out, was not a natural supporter of the basic principle of Pack Law that stated that a person's actions were punishable regardless of their intent. That even a person acting in total innocence was still to be considered guilty if their actions led to harm.

For Dean, that kind of lofty judgement was unfair and inequitable and fundamentally wrong.

Strange perhaps, that Dean's natural instinct was so at odds with the rules that had been set in stone by the All-Father.

Or perhaps not.

Because there was definitely nothing of the _All-Father_ in Dean Winchester.

And thus, a person brought up in a Pack, so entrenched in Pack Law that the way they perceived the world was only through the lens of Pack mentality, might make certain assumptions about how Dean might react to certain situations, might believe without even consciously thinking about it that set up to suffer a certain number of events, in a number of certain cleverly devised situations, that Dean would react in a particular, anticipated and 'obvious' way.

A way that, actually, wasn't _obvious_ to Dean at all.

So, it could be stated here, with some quiet confidence, that the original plan of Lucifer Sethson, as enacted by his minion, Azazel, was always doomed to failure because Lucifer was too darned arrogant to consider that Dean might not react to situations in the way that Lucifer fully expected him to.

The truth is that Dean would _never_ have turned on his brother. Dean would never have stood by in any court, regardless of what might have happened to him in the interim, and stood witness against Sam for actions that Dean would always believe were _NOT SAM'S FAULT_.

Besides, Dean's capacity for love was not conditional. He was not capable of only loving someone who 'deserved' to be loved. Just as he had been fully prepared to _eventually_ forgive his Sire for attempting to kill him, how could he ever have concieved of a time when a truly penitent Sam could not _also_ be embraced back into his life? Dean had decided to love Sam from the moment the pup was born and he would have continued loving him until the day he died. And that didn't mean Dean would ever have just rolled over and accepted being treated badly. His love didn't stop him being fully prepared to punch some sense back into his brother with his own fists if that's what it took. That might not even have stopped him ultimately turning his back on Sam and telling him that he never wanted to see him again.

But even if it had come to that, to Dean casting Sam from his life completely, Dean would still have _loved_ him.

So, even if he had, somehow, decided that Sam's actions _were_ his fault, still never, ever, in any scenario ever devised by anyone, would Dean have agreed to stand witness against Sam to enable another person to enact judgement upon his little brother. If there were any chastisement to be dealt, Dean would either have applied it himself or it would not have happened.

Had nothing else changed, that perhaps might have been the end of the matter.

The explosive story of Dean Winchester would have faded to the damp squib of a life lived without further drama or suffering and nothing, fundamentally, would have changed at all save for the world continuing to slide to its not so-eventual destruction unimpeded.

So, perhaps, for everyone's sake, it is as well that that is not how it happened.

But we didn't pause the telling of this tale to forshadow future events.

The importance here is to consider some events of the past.

And that returns us to the consideration of Lucifer's arrogance.

Sadly, arrogance was something that was a fundamental character trait of the whole Primá species of humanity. It might be supposed that being born as a Top Dog, being accorded that ultimate position in life from the moment you were created in a womb, did naturally lend itself to Primáres developing a somewhat over inflated ego. Even the best of them, and some were genuinely good guys, still had a tendency to be jerks on occassion.

Contrary, perhaps, to your expectation at this point of the tale, history considers Lucifer a 'good guy'. That's the thing about history. It puts things into context because of the 'bigger picture'. The problem with looking at things from the benefit of hindsight, however, that its often so all-encompassing and so slated to see only the benefits of decisions made to the greater good that it is easy to overlook the small, incredibly important pieces that make up the whole.

One of those important pieces is this:

Lucifer was an jerk.

An arrogant jerk.

It had never crossed his mind when handing out his orders to his minions to explain the reasoning behind his orders. His 'management style' was simply to tell members of his pack what he wanted them, as individuals, to do and then simply expect his orders to be carried out whilst Lucifer alone wandered around with the full plan in his own head. He only provided the minimum amount of information to his minions that he believed they needed to know in order to perform their roles effectively and sometimes, very occassionally, he misjudged the situation completely.

And so it was that there was a really good reason Azazel had never tried to just bypass the whole 'let's corrupt Sam' scenario and aim simply for gaining Dean's sexual compliance with the artificial pheremones (because, let's face it, Sam would have gotten the blame for Dean's subsequent behavior anyway).

His reason was thus; Azazel had absolutely no idea the fake pheremones would work on Dean.

Azazel didn't give Becky Rosen a bottle of 'fake' pheremones. He gave her a precious vial containing a mere 12 drops of pure distilled 'real' pheremones. The only 12 drops that Alastair could spare. Because both Azazel and Alastair both absolutely, completely, were of the opinion that only those real pheremones would have an effect on an Omegá.

Omegáres don't automatically open their legs for every Primá who crosses their path. There is a really good reason that Omegáres get to choose their Primáres and it, really, has a lot less to do with their religious status and a lot more to do with their biology. Whilst a Primá isn't constrained by the same biological issue that prevents an Alpha from raping an Omegá and their cocks are far more durable for attempting to breach an unwilling Flores, it is far more pleasant for _both_ parties if the Omegá is willing and eager to be mounted. Just as people respond to different perfumes in different ways, so an Omegá might vastly prefer one Primá's pheremonal signature more than another's. Sometimes, very rarely, an Omegá will take one sniff of a Primá's pheremones and their Flores will open so fast that a room will fill immediately with the scent of their slick. Far more often, a particular pheremonal signiture will, at the very least, cause the Omegá to become extremely receptive to seduction. It's very rare an Omegá will find a pheremonal signature offensive but neither is it particularly often that an Omegá meets the signature that simply blows his mind. Nevertheless, after mating a Primá, that particular Primá's pheremonal signature will become a unique sexual trigger to their Omegá and from there on in, they won't even register any other Primá's pheremones at all.

There was a reason Alastair Lues had to collect those pheremones from a Conclave instead of just being provided some directly from Lucifer himself. (Well, actually, there were several different reasons which will become relevant later but, for the purposes of this particular scenario, we'll stick to the relevant one). Lucifer's pheremones alone would have been sufficient basis for creating the artificial pheremones required to affect teen Alpha behavior but would have been highly unlikely to have any dramatic effect on any but a very select few Omegáres in the world and the odds of Dean being one of those Omegáres were so extremely low it wasn't worth considering. Unless Lucifer's pheremonal signature had, by pure chance, matched with exactly the form of pheremonal signature Dean naturally craved, then his pheremones would have had little or no behavioural effect on Dean whatsoever.

Yet there were a limited number of specifically different separate elements that formed the basis of all pheremonal signatures.

Pheremones gathered from a group of at least a dozen different Primáres would inevitably, mixed up, contain sufficient of all the basic elements of pheremones that the end result would inevitably contain a potent dose of enough variety to satisfy any Omegá. Somewhere inside that eclectic mix, the individual elements any Omegá required to feel intense attraction would be present and the Omegá would simply dismiss the unwanted elements as irrelevant and focus merely on those pheremones that specifically appealed to him. So the vial Azazel gave to Becky Rosen would have, frankly, worked on any Omegá in the world.

The artificial pheremones, however, were not so generically useful.

In the attempt to chemically reproduce the pheremones, Alastair and his fellow scientists had been restrained by a need to concentrate purely on the most heavily present elements in their sample. In doing so, they had created a pretty good imitation not of the pheremones of a dozen Primáres but of one Primá in particular. The one who had been closest to Alastair and who had been, by the nature of the Conclave, the source of most of the pheremonal emissions in the room.

The artificial pheremones were, consequently, a really good approximation of the pheremonal signature of only one Primá, Castiel Cainson, and the odds of him being a pheremonal match with Dean Winchester were about as likely as Lucifer's.

Or so Azazel and Alastair believed.

Lucifer, of course, would have known better.

Only Lucifer didn't _know_ that Azazel and Alastair needed to know about Castiel and Dean being destined mates because, like many important, arrogant men, he was good at talking but not half as good at listening and he'd never really paid much attention to the actual 'details' of any of Alastair's scientific 'mumbo-jumbo' anyway. So he'd told Alastair to create the pheremones and Azazel to use them on Sam, and Alastair and Azazel had done as he'd asked and, as far as all of them were concerned, everyone had done exactly what they were supposed to do and that was that.

So, like I said, that should have been the end of the matter.

Except that, one day, two years earlier, Sam Winchester had stolen a tiny amount of Azazel's fake pheremomes and put a drop or two in a necklace that he had given Dean for Shab-e Yalda.

And that well-meant gift, genuinely offered to protect his brother from the attention of rut-raging Alphas had, obviously, instead simply had somewhat of a unique effect on Dean. So much so that Dean had, when learning later of what Sam had done, been so mortified and embarassed that he had taken the necklace off and never worn it again.

But he hadn't thrown it away.

Despite knowing what the necklace had inadvertantly done to him, Dean had still treasured it as a genuinely well-intended gift from his brother and had therefore simply tucked it away in a box in his drawer with a few other precious things and, when faced with having to leave Bobby's house, Sam had retrieved Dean's little box of personal treasures for him and had taken it to Azazel's house and put it away for safekeeping. But, for some reason or other, he hadn't gotten around to giving it to Dean yet.

Even so, that might not have been significant had Sam not become so close to Azazel in the last year that when Azazel had innocently stumbled over the box and its contents one day when putting some clothes away in Sam's wardrobe and made an, again, purely innocent question of why Sam didn't wear _his_ necklace of the All-Father, that Sam not only blurted out that the necklace actually belonged to Dean but then felt morally obliged to finally confess to his original 'crime'.

"So you thought it would, what, stop any teen Alpha attacking him?" Azazel asked.

"Yeah, but obviously it didn't work because Metatron still went batshit crazy and then, well, after I told him what I'd done, Dean stopped wearing it."

"That was a bit unfair," Azazel commiserated. "I mean, I have as much reason or more to be mad about what you did, Sam, but I understand you were only trying to help him."

"Oh, I don't think he stopped wearing it because he was mad with me," Sam replied innocently. "I mean that's what I thought too at the time, so I asked him about it and he got all embarrassed and awkward and eventually said he thought the drug had 'done something to him'. And I stopped asking him the details, because I figured maybe it was something about him being an Omegá and well, ewww."

And Azazel smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From here on, there are some much darker times ahead.  
> Although I will clearly mark parts that might be uncomfortable, to allow them to be 'skipped over' and most of the more distressing scenes are recounted from third party perspectives as I believe that is the best way to impart necessarily unpleasant information without lingering on the scenes themselves, please be warned that a lot of the warning tags start coming into play from the very next chapter.


	69. Chapter Sixty Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a clearly marked section in the latter half of this chapter which some readers might wish to skip over. I am as certain as I can be that the details of that scene can be omitted if you wish, as long as you read the parts before and after.  
> I do 'hope' that having read the end of the chapter you will gain sufficient context to go back and face it. If not, the story can be easily read onwards purely in the knowlege that something that should have been 'beautiful' was instead corrupted into evil.

Charlene Bradbury, better known to her friends as Charlie, felt like she was pointlessly beating her head against a brick wall. And yes, maybe some of the bricks were starting to crumble and flake a little under her constant assault but the chances of the wall actually falling down seemed as improbable now as when she had started.

Except for a constant pounding headache and enough frustration that she wanted to explode like a primed nuclear weapon, she felt she was realistically getting nowhere. Well, nowhere _useful_ anyway. She was running out of time so quickly that she could actually hear a doomsday clock constantly ticking a countdown to disaster. Or maybe it was just the sound of the frantic beating of her breaking heart that was drumming through her head.

Dean had trusted her.

Dean had put all his hopes on her.

And so far she had failed him.

God, how very badly she had failed him so far.

When she thought about it, she just wanted to curl up in a crumpled ball of sheer misery and sob her heart out.

But, instead, she just went back to banging angrily against that brick wall.

And, at least, she wasn't fighting alone.

"Look," Kevin said, clicking a key on his laptop and then pushing himself away from the desk with a tired sigh. "We know he was right about the drug. _Obviously_. So it stands to reason he was right about everything else too. So, let's break it down, folks. What do we know so far?"

"Fuck all," Charlie snarled tiredly, dropping her head in her hands and running her fingers through her hair in angry frustration.

"That's not true," Aiden chided encouragingly. "We now know Azazel Al'asfar didn't officially exist before eighteen years ago. We know he must _somehow_ be connected to those other six Betas we've tracked down with similar false backgrounds who also suddenly came into existence in America roughly eighteen years ago. So, although we still don't know where they originally came from, or who they are actually working for, we know they are all probably, well, _almost definitely_ , working together in some way."

"We still have absolutely no idea of what they are _really_ doing yet," Kevin admitted. "But the fact they are all working in situations such as schools which gives them direct access to teenage Alphas definitely suggests that they are using or testing drugs in the same way as Azazel. Two of the schools actually list Special Advanced Placement classes on their published curriculums, so that's as good as proof in my mind that they are being run for exactly the same reason as they are here. I've set up a search algorithm that's running right now to see how many Metatron-type incidents have occurred in those other six cities. I'm thinking what happened with him going bonkers might actually have been a side-effect of early testing. It makes sense. I mean, I know Alphas can go into rage at fourteen and try to rape girls but the whole him being convinced Gilda actually genuinely wanted to be his _wife_ thing was definitely too 'out there' to be normal, you know?

"And, don't yell at me, but I think maybe the drug does kind of work in good ways too _now_. I mean, I know Max Miller got murdered like a rager but it wasn't _true_ , was it? He really did have his rage almost totally under control. Joanna definitely thought so and she should know. She said he was perfectly in control of himself except for maybe being just a bit 'rough' with her during consensual sex. Well, I'm pretty sure that's not any definition of 'rut rage' that's ever been used before in the history of the world. So maybe they're still working on the drug, still perfecting it maybe, and the pups getting dosed right now are just being unwitting, illegal guinea pigs before a bigger roll out later once the testing is over.

"I think these are all some kind of illicit clinical trials and the reason they're being done in secret is because they don't want to be held accountable if any Beta girls get caught in the crossfire whilst they perfect the drug. Sioux Falls is unique only because there happens to be an Omegá here and, since they couldn't possibly have anticipated that co-incidentally happening in one of the seven small cities they picked for the trials, maybe Al'asfar is just taking advantage of the 'happy co-incidence' and using Dean as an opportunity to push the boat out a little further on his original program. Maybe he's using Dean as a _control_."

"That actually makes sense. So maybe deliberately sexualising Dean isn't about trying to get him fucked but actually completely the opposite. Maybe Azazel is just using him like particularly tempting bait to see how well the drug works in preventing 'rage'. Perhaps he's encouraging Dean to be really slutty just to find out whether the drug can actually stop Alphas mounting _anyone_ , even if they seem to be begging for it," Dorothy suggested hopefully.

"Lets bloody hope so," Charlie sighed.

"The theory would stack up and we _know_ there's definitely some particularly close connection between Azazel Al'asfar and that government scientist Alastair Lues because you found the proof of that too," Krissy pointed out.

"I can prove emails have regularly passed between their IP addresses, that's how I know about Lues in the first place, but they're using levels of encryption on their mail that I didn't even dream existed before we started this," Charlie groaned. "Even if I had the skill to do it, which I doubt, I definitely don't have a hope in hell of breaking the encryption enough to actually read the contents of the emails with the equipment I've got at my disposal."

"Even so, it proves there is a connection," Krissy countered. "So I imagine Lues is the source of the drug and, since he definitely works for the government, that supports the idea this whole Alpha thing is actually being done on behalf of our own government. And, although there's no paper trail directly connecting them since they _both_ seem to have false identities, Azazel has claimed to have a 'brother' in a high government position, so it's possible that they genuinely _are_ brothers. Maybe we should concentrate on discovering their true identities. It's got to be easier to follow _two_ linked terms of reference back to their source."

"Unless 'brother' is just a generic term for fellow conspirator," Charlie grumbled.

"Even so, that would still suggest Azazel _is_ working for the government. Maybe they are all Government black hats. I mean look at their names, seven guys with surnames that co-incidentally translate to colours of the rainbow and a scientist called 'Lues'? Isn't that some kind of old word for syphilis ?"

"It is, though I guess the word would cover any sexually transmitted disease or pestilence."

"So he's claiming to be what? Mr Anti-Pestilence?" Kevin mocked.

"Hang on," Charlie exclaimed, her eyes widening with sudden excitement. "I think you're on to something, Kevin. But you've kind of got it backwards. I don't think he's 'anti' anything. I don't know a lot about ancient scripture but, in the original All-Father testament, it mentions Pestilence as one of the apocalyptic harbingers, doesn't it?"

Kevin's expression cleared as understanding dawned. "Yeah, you're right. Pestilence is one of four supposed harbingers of the end days. There's three more. Death, War and Famine. All four are supposed to turn up to bring down the apocalypse; the time when the universe is destroyed and then swallowed back inside the Omadonna, ready to be recreated all over again in a purer form."

"Yeah, in the hope everyone won't fuck it all up again second time around," Krissy muttered. "Can't see the point, personally. People always eventually fuck everything up."

"Anyway, back to the point, given whoever set this up seems to like playing silly word games, as we know from the Rainbow guys, we need to look for three more people with dubious credentials and names that fit those three designations and they're probably going to be more scientists like Lues," Charlie said.

"I think someone being called Dr Death would be a bit of a giveaway," Garth laughed.

Charlie chuckled despite herself. "Yeah, but it will be more subtle than that. I mean the name Lues doesn't exactly reach out and grab you by the balls. It's not going to be blindingly obvious. Like the Death guy is more likely to called something like Mortis or Moira or Dauthaz. That kind of thing. We need to think outside the box, pups. And maybe don't just look at scientists. Look at other people of influence. Find anyone who could possibly fit the profile, then we'll do background checks on the shortlist of possible candidates and the minute we find one with a record as perfectly crafted as Lues', we'll know it's probably a false ID and narrow down on them.

"Whoever set this up didn't do so particularly cleverly. They were following a predictable pattern. They were arrogant because they didn't expect anyone to connect the dots. Dean's depending on us. Let's not let him down. If we can figure out who's behind this, maybe we can do something to stop it."

"We're a bunch of school-age pups," Kevin reminded her. "What can we actually _do_?"

"Dirty secrets don't ever survive the light of revelation. Either we reveal what's going on to enough people to stop it working out for them and by stopping the end result we make it pointless for them to carry on or, maybe, just knowing what they're up to would give us enough leverage to convince them to stop just by threatening to make it public. I can't imagine many parents of Beta girls would think it's acceptable to do this kind of shit in public. But we need to crack on. I think we're running out of time. Sam's sixteen next week and that means he _legally_ loses any excuse not to fuck Dean himself and since the law says Dean _needs_ to be mounted, if Sam wants to keep being Dean's Guardian, either he's going to do it or, maybe even worse, he's going to save himself by declaring open season on Dean to the other Alphas and Dean isn't, well, he isn't in a position to say no at the minute so we need to say no for him."

"How do we know it isn't already too late?" Dorothy asked, her eyes dark with misery.

"We don't," Charlie admitted. "But the last time I spoke to Dean he said Sam wasn't using him like that."

"Yeah, but that was back when Sam usually looked like a big douchey nerd, not a constantly red eyed Alpha on speed. Whatever Azazel's giving the other Alphas to supposedly 'control' their rage, it doesn't look like its having the same effect on Sam. If you ask me, it definitely isn't just Dean on sexing- _up_ drugs these days."

Charlie flinched. "I know Sam was definitely on something weird on the night of Shab-e yalda. He looked so stoned on stage I'm surprised he managed to perform at all. He definitely didn't manage to say more than a couple of his lines before he got completely 'lost in the moment' and the narrator then had to fill in for him for the rest of the play. But since then, he's been practically normal, except for his eyes and that snarly thing he's got going on whenever anyone goes anywhere near Dean, and I think that's probably just his Alpha responding to the way Dean is behaving. I think Sam is going to crash into full-blown rut rage any minute and it's definitely Dean who Sam is fixated on _now_. I really can't believe any drug exists that could possibly _stop_ that particular train crash happening."

"And you're absolutely sure it isn't what Dean wants?" Krissy asked cautiously. "I mean obviously he's all fucked up right now but maybe...well, maybe he just decided to stop fighting the inevitable. He... well, I hate to say it but he doesn't actually look _unhappy_. Stoned, yeah, undoubtedly, but it's a _happy_ kind of stoned."

"Mellow," Garth agreed. "Not hyper or tripping. Just really, really mellow. And, well, a bit slutty."

"We spoke before Shab-e Yalda. There is no way he ever agreed to what happened that night. He was furious and horrified at even the thought of being humiliated like that. Yet ten days later he performed like a shameless porn star on that stage and you all know he hasn't been 'Dean' ever since. He's stoned out of his mind. He has been since that night. And he sure as hell isn't taking the shit that's fucking him up voluntarily. Dean isn't the type to get addicted to stuff even if it feels fantastic. He's all about self-control. He _had_ to be to survive so long in a Beta world without his designation being detected. You don't just throw away years of learning to behave so carefully. It's habitual for him now. So even if the drug makes him feel like he's completely hammered and makes him look as happy as Larry, I know deep down he is fighting it all the way and if we can just buy him some time he'll find a way to get himself under control."

"My mom says he's just finally embracing his inner slut like all Omegáres'" Kevin said. "But she's full of shit. No one who actually knows Dean would ever believe the way he's behaving is anything except some fucked-up mind control. And, although I still want to kick Sam's ass, I'm definitely beginning to believe that Azazel is fucking him over too."

Charlie sighed, her eyes dark with remembered pain. "I know I've always said Sam was a typical Alpha dick but, but...well it wasn't really true. He had this kind of sweet side too, sometimes, that I saw when I was around their house and even with all the shit that was going down he cared about Dean. Maybe not as well as he should have, but every now and then I'd see glimpses of it, you know? And after their mom died and Dean was stuck in the hospital, Sam was really genuinely sick with worry he'd never see him again.

"And, yeah, some of it was just the whole Alpha and _his_ Omegá thing but, at the same time, it was also just a young pup genuinely scared of losing his older brother. I can't pretend to know what really goes on in Sam's head. I probably don't _want_ to know. But....but the one thing I know for sure is that the guy I saw on that stage that night was not Sam Winchester.

"It can't have been. Because...because if it was...if he really did that obscenity to Dean in his right mind then...then I think I might just actually have to take Auntie Pam's gun and shoot him dead myself.

"And...and I don't think when Dean gets better he'd forgive me for that. So...so I have to believe that Sam is a victim too. I _have_ to." 

The details of that Diezmes evening were permanently etched on her brain, forever playing themselves over and over in her memory like some awful horror movie on looping repeat.

 

*****

 

If you don't want to read the details of what actually happened on Shab-e Yalda, skip over this next section to the next asterisks.

 

******

 

Dean, her brave, wonderful friend Dean, sitting rudely exposed and defenceless on a public stage set up in the centre of Falls Park, naked as a newborn pup, his legs spread impossibly wide as Sam had tugged on a thick string and had gradually pulled a series of impossibly huge shiny globes out of his cunt, extracting them one at a time like a magician producing rabbits out of a hat and then proudly presenting each like a prize to the delight of a gasping, thrilled audience.

Producing, improbably, a vast seemingly endless rope of connected balls representing the entire galaxy whilst the Alphas on stage had stumbled over their lines, too distracted by the show to always remember their own parts in it, let alone fill in for Sam's, so the whole 'play' became little more than a monologue from the narrator and the audience had cooed and gasped with wonder at the sheer impossibility of a human body even containing so much inside itself, let alone birthing it shamelessly in front of a gathered crowd.

On that night, on that stage, the Omadonna was somehow brought to physical life and the impossible tale of the creation of the universe, enacted in real life, became terribly and obscenely possible to believe. Even the sceptics and heretics in the crowd trembled and shivered as a myth was brought to life in front of their very eyes.

But all Charlie could think of, at the time, was how had they possibly got all that much shit hidden inside Dean in the first place. How had his vagina accepted such huge globes being shoved inside him in preparation for the extraction process. How had he survived being stuffed so full that his stomach had looked as fat and extended as if he was several months pregnant before Sam began the slow, dramatic reveal during the progression of the play.

One by one, the sun and the moon and the individual planets and far too damned many of the stars had been tugged out of Dean's body and the slick-shined objects then proudly held aloft by a triumphant Sam, whose eyes had blazed as scarlet as blood, and his teeth had glinted like the knives piercing Charlie's heart.

How had Dean just sat there, his head thrown back in agonised pleasure at the sensation of the balls being tugged out of his Flores, his eyes so glazed that they had shone like emerald glass pebbles as he had moaned and gasped in birthing pains even as he also shook and shuddered through evident multiple orgasms during the whole, terrible process.

Even when he was finally empty, and his Flores had been left as wide as a black hole, pulsing its hungry emptiness for the delight of the gathered crowd, still he had just writhed and arched on the stage like a shameless, wanton whore.

Then, with terrible inevitability , the play reached the prediction of the end days, when all of creation would be sucked back into the Omadonna ready for a new universe to be born.

One by one, Sam re-inserted the globes inside his brother, burying the stars and the planets and the moon and finally the sun, one at a time, rudely pushing and shoving the balls into the open Flores, until Dean's abdomen was bulging and his mouth was opened in a constant, high pitched howl of something that might have been pain or pleasure or somehow both.

"But after the end of days, when all life has been extinguished and all hope seems gone, the All-Father will relent and regret his decision to remove his gift of the universe. And so he will bid his Bride, the holy mother, to return the Universe to its rightful place," the narrator intoned.

And then, under a bright show of overhead fireworks, Sam had grabbed the end of the rope and pulled savagely and the entire universe had suddenly burst out of Dean in a near explosion as his Flores, stretched beyond any human understanding by the earlier abuse, had simply allowed the balls inside him to flow out through its unresisting gaping maw in a violent spewing ejection.

"And the All-Father will sow the seeds of life upon the reborn Universe," the narrator intoned, and all the Alpha performers, even Sam, had then surrounded Dean and masturbated until they had all sent spurting trails of come all over the spilt entrails of the universe and Dean's orgasming body, covering it in silvery trails that dripped and merged into the slick dripping visibly from his gaping hole.

Somehow, it had been even more horrible, more humiliating, more degrading, than if they had simply mounted him.

In that moment he had been reduced to nothing more than a fleshly stage prop, not even a performer. Something no more human than the discarded globes strewn on the stage floor.

Then the Alphas had all accepted the applause of the audience and taken their bows and the curtain had finally fallen to conceal the stage and the despoiled Omegá from view.

And then everyone had spent the rest of the night drinking and eating and dancing (and spending satisfying amounts of money at all the market stalls set up on the periphery of the park) and not one voice had been raised in query over what had become of the Omegá who had entertained them so well.

Charlie, who had vomited the contents of her stomach, who had been crying and screaming her outrage, banging her fists on backs and shoulders as she had shoved her way through the crowds of revellers, had finally arrived behind the curtain, dishevelled and battered and bruised, far too late to find anything except a deserted stage.

 

*****

And she hadn't seen Dean since.

Oh, she had seen Sam's pet Omegá. The silent, glazed eyed 'mellow' shadow who followed Sam around in a doped happy haze. Had seen that pretty, vacant creature sitting next to Sam in class, its green eyes open but totally unseeing.

But that wasn't Dean.

Hell, no, _that_ wasn't Dean Winchester.

And so Charlie had cried.

And Charlie had mourned and then...

And then Charlie had put her big girl pants on and decided that until Dean found a way to drag himself out of his drugged haze to fight back for himself, she would damned well do the fighting for him.

~

But before we leave the Losers to continue their quest to save their friend, Dean, let's take a moment to reflect a little.

What's important to understand here is the reason Daniel's Pack allowed this to happen. Even those of you who politely averted your eyes from the details of the actual events are probably wondering how it happened at all.

You know that it is highly likely that Abaddon is working for Daniel; keeping a close eye on Dean without actually interfering in Free Beta business directly. It is then fair for you to also assume that Daniel has more than one 'spy' watching over the younger Omegá and, although his hands are tied to a large extent (primarily by his respect for Dean's own wishes), it is also fair to assume that someone like Daniel, if he perceived Dean to be in terrible danger, would act first and deal with the consequences later.

So why, when he almost inevitably heard the rumours of the City Council planning to perform a public Creation Ceremony, did that not ring sufficient alarm bells to prevent it occuring?

The simple answer will probably surprise you.

But bear with me.

The _simple_ answer of why Daniel did not register the Ceremony to be a potential issue was the fact that at the very moment Sam was performing it on Dean, Daniel's beloved Ophriel was performing it on _him_ and, for that matter, the only reason _Joshua_ didn't spend the night of Shab-e Yalda on a stage was the fact he was pregnant.

And Joshua was _incredibly_ sulky about missing out on the opportunity, so much so that Jophiel spent the best part of a fortnight ducking and diving around his own Pack Hall like a criminal to avoid his mate since Joshua was blaming _him_ for the poor timing of the impregnation.

Which is where, I believe, a far more detailed answer than a 'simple' one is required.

What is significant is that even in the unlikely event of anyone surviving a trial for performing such a rite on an _unwilling_ Omegá, they still would face a probable death sentence for performing such a heinous act of Heretical Cultural Misappropriation.

No Omegá naturally has any taboos over nakedness or public sex or even the idea of blatantly exhibiting their Flores. _Shame_ is a Beta concept imposed upon them by Free Beta society and is completely alien to their natural state of being. An Omegá such as Daniel or Joshua, who never had _shame_ taught to them by Beta cruelty, were capable of total sympathy with their more oppressed brethren but not actual _empathy_. It is important to understand that most Pack Omegáres even make the choice to physically whelp their pups in the centre of their own Pack Halls, in view of the gathered Pack members, in huge birthing party ceremonies, because they are _proud_ to display their fertility and share the _wonders_ of their biology with their Pack. The fact an Omegá is _physically_ capable of performing the Creation Ceremony is something a Pack Omegá takes immense pride in. They believe it proves, beyond doubt, that they are not mundane but instead are truly touched by the divine. 

Attempt to look at what happened to Dean in Falls Park through _Omegá_ eyes:

The offence was not in action but in INTENT. 

Daniel did not spend his ceremony surrounded by beer-swilling, hot-dog munching, revellers who considered him an evening's 'entertainment' like a performing circus animal. 

Daniel performed the ritual surrounded by a Pack who were literally on their knees in genuine worship, silent in awe, tears pouring down their cheeks as they saw the gift of the universe offered from Daniel's Altar and quaked at the _wonder_ of the Omadonna as revealed to them through Daniel's flesh. Even Ophriel, though performing the same role as Sam, did so weak-kneed with complete and absolute _awe_ that he was _ever_ considered worthy to touch a living embodiment of the Omadonna. For days after the ceremony, none, even Ophriel, had been able to raise their eyes to meet Daniel's for it was  _they_ who felt shamed for even daring to consider they had the right to even breathe the same air as a creature as touched by divinity as an Omegá.

For Daniel, and Joshua, and countless other Pack Omegáres, the Creation Ceremony was, frankly, one of the highlights of their year. It was something they looked forward to. A performance that lifted them from the mundane and cast them so fully in the spotlight of divinity that it often took months before everyone in the Pack stopped tip-toeing around them in nervous, stuttering awe.

So Daniel must be forgiven for not even being able to concieve of such an outrage as the Free Betas taking something so HOLY and perverting it into something so base.

It was, frankly (if crudely) as though the Betas had taken a big fat dump on the Holy Book itself.

It was not an insult that would have remained unaddressed, even had Dean participated in the ceremony willingly.

But, under the circumstances, the Packs were LIVID when they heard what Sioux Falls had done.

The repercussions of which will become apparent.

 

 

 


	70. Chapter Sixty Six

Every morning, without fail, Charlie waited in the school parking lot for Azazel Al'asfar's car to arrive.

Every morning, she ignored Sam's red eyed glare and warning growl to brightly chirp a cheery good morning to Dean.

And, every morning, Dean walked past her, walking with surprising grace despite his dead eyed stare, and not only failed to acknowledge her greeting but seemingly didn't notice she was there at all.

And, yet, every morning Charlie continued to perform her lone vigil in that parking lot and dared to hope that _that_ day would be the day that something finally changed.

~

Despite working on Daniel's behalf, Abbadon Knight had never met the Omegá himself.

To tell the truth, strictly speaking, she'd never met _any_ Omegá before the day she spoke to Dean Winchester because as a Second Beta she didn't even take her orders directly from Morgana, Ophriel's latest (third) Beta Wife, but from one of Morgana's First Betas.

I should perhaps explain that Ophriel, unlike Lucifer, had not remarried several times for the sake of obtaining a younger 'model'. He had simply outlived his first two Beta wives. He'd lost the first to cancer and the second to old age. He'd remarried a third time purely to ensure the smooth running of his Pack Hall and although Morgana was a capable Beta Wife, both had entered into the marriage with no illusions it was anything other than a business arrangement. After eight decades of having Daniel in his life, Ophriel had completely lost the capacity to see any female as even remotely desirable. That possibly made him a weaker Primá but, he liked to believe, a better man.

Because she had been born in Ophriel's Pack Land decades after he had first mated with Daniel, Abbadon had obviously grown up in Daniel's presence but she had never had occasion to ever interact with him directly. It was highly unusual for any Second Beta to have any dealings with the upper echelons of the Pack anyway but, because she had still been in the ranks of Fourth Beta before she won the opportunity to rise dramatically in hierarchal status by accepting her special role in Beta Land, she had never even set foot in Pack Land at her current rank.

Abaddon had been working 'undercover' in Beta Land for five years. Up until her reassignment to keep a close eye on Dean, those years had been marked only by their bland, boring, normality. None of Ophriel's undercover operatives were spies or secret agents or anything so dramatic or exciting. They were merely _watchers_ , planted outside of Pack Land only to offer early warning to the Pack of any impending external danger.

So, contrary to possible expectations, Abbadon had little or no particular 'insider knowledge' about how exactly a Free Beta Omegá should behave. Although it would be fair to suggest that what little she had understood would definitely have led her to expect the opposite of the Dean whom she had first met. She certainly had not expected to find a proud, defiant pup such as the one she had encountered. She had always imagined Omagáres to be quietly submissive by nature and, though regal of bearing and undeniably 'holy', she had always been of the opinion they were probably not terribly 'bright'. Not that she meant that in a critical way. It simply wasn't necessary for an Omegá to be an intellectual, after all.

Her understanding of Omagáres was that they were some peculiar combination of human and divine, who had a tendency to be naturally sexually precocious but were essentially too fey and innocent and delicate to be worldly wise and so were consequently unable to prevent the way they were so roughly handled in Beta Land.

She had been raised to feel awe towards Daniel and had always dipped her eyes in shy respect if he had ever wandered into her sight when she was younger, but she had never really given any consideration to the fact he was an actual _person_. She had been kept too distant to perceive him as anything more than an Icon to be worshipped because of her reverence for the Omadonna, rather than respecting him because of any personal, individual attributes of his own.

That failure to see him as 'real' was not evidence of any flaw in Abbadon's own personality. She was a product of her upbringing and the Packs, by deliberately setting Omegáres apart and above the other Pack members, had inadvertantly caused them to become seen as almost abstract decorative objects rather than individuals.

She did, absolutely, believe that the Betas were evil for harming Omagáres and probably eternally damned to hellfire for their disrespect towards them. It never, admittedly, occurred to her that her own somewhat patronising attitude to Omagáres might also be perceived as a form of damnable disrespect.

It was, though, perhaps because of a combination of that attitudinal flaw and the fact that no-one from the Packs had ever had any idea whatsoever that an Omegá could be 'drugged' in such a fashion, that Abaddon believed the alteration of Dean's personality since Shab-e Yalda had been achieved by his brother in a far more obvious and straight forward way.

She was sure Dean was, she reported, being sexually manipulated but she assumed that was being achieved by the simple replacement of his bridle with a dual vaginal pegging. She knew enough about Beta practices to know it had been long established that the insertion of a ridged peg into an Omegá's rectal passage caused them to be permanently hyper-sexualised. She assumed that Dean's new 'mellow' attitude was caused purely by the fact he was in a constant state of sexual satisfaction. She couldn't imagine any other scenario that might create the same overall result.

That is not to say she was unaware of Sam's changed behaviour _also_ and she didn't make the mistake of merely putting 'his' particular peculiarites down to rut rage. It was, as she pointed out in her reports, absolutely improbable that any of the Alphas who had performed on stage that night had done so in the throes of rut rage. The clue to that certainty was in the name. It was called 'rut' for a reason. A teen Alpha caught in rut rage was not capable of performing a damned play! Had the teens been incapable of controlling themselves because of genuine 'rage' then the only performance that would have occurred in Falls Park that night would have been that of a half a dozen Alphas mounting an Omegá in front of an audience.

So she judged that the teens had definitely and knowingly taken advantage of Dean's hyper-sexualised state and had participated in the heretical performance voluntarily.

The fact they had almost indisputably done so with the encouragement of the authorities and their particularly loathsome teacher Azazel was pretty irrelevant (except for the fact _they_ also should face reprisals) because as a Pack born, Abaddon had no sympathy for the idea of someone not being accountable for their own behaviour. As far as she was concerned, all of the teen Alphas were guilty.

Because they were all under eighteen and Dean had not actually been mounted, she knew the most ultimately satisfying sanctions were not legally available. However, she still recommended that their offences be noted for later Pack discipline whenever the opportunity arose and suggested they all received at least a flogging for the offence.

Ultimately, she knew the application of any justice dispensed would not be decided by a lowly Second Beta but she still felt it behoved her to offer a personal recommendation as to how seriously the teenagers' offences should be taken. And that was, in her opinion, pretty seriously indeed. It wasn't as though they were little pups. They were virtually adults and surely should have understood that they were doing wrong.

However, she also added her sincere concern that Sam Winchester had definitely appeared to be under the additional influence of some form of narcotic during the performance.

Abaddon, it should be noted, did not do so under any belief the drug was anything other than a self-administered one. She had no reason to suspect any external influence was being applied to Sam and, having spent a number of years teaching in Free Beta schools, she had sadly a lot of experience of seeing pups Sam's age fall for the lure of illicit substances.

Particularly a pup who, like Sam, had apparently witnessed the murder of his mother at the hands of his step-father and then the killing of his step-father by his mother's new lover who had then been fatally injured in the fight. That kind of trauma could probably send any pup off the rails.

It was highly concerning though, if Sam really was on Crack or meth or something similar, that he had 'ownership' of an Omegá . Particularly if he was irresponsible enough to combine a drug addiction with his definitely impending rut rage.

Abaddon composed a carefully worded report that she really thought it might be best for everyone concerned if Sam was removed from the situation entirely. Perhaps a 'random' school blood test might reveal the truth to those in authority and would inevitably end in his removal to a military academy, thus offering him a programmed cure for his addiction and a far safer environment for Dean.

~

Every evening, Charlie met with the other Losers to collate the information they had gathered and plan their next endeavours.

Kevin's algorithm had uncovered several other severe incidents concerning teen Alphas within the suspected locations but although the coverage of all those incidents had been reported in local papers the details had either been too sparse or were clearly just over-dramatic works of fiction. What was evident though, was that all had been, actually, far worse that the Metatron incident and had ultimately resulted in two dead Betas and six dead Alphas.

"They all pre-date when Metatron attacked Gilda," Kevin pointed out. "And the two dead girls were both killed during the initial two incidents, and the following ones were progressively less violent. So it supports the idea the drug was pretty raw when they first started testing it and then was adjusted every time it went wrong."

"But it's still just co-incidence unless we can find some corroborating, linking factors other than the fact they were all Alphas. Everyone already _knows_ teen Alphas go into rage. We need the details. Like, well maybe they all went insane as well as into rage like Metatron did. We need something out of the ordinary if we're ever going to have proof this was caused by a drug."

"I know you've got mad hacking skills, Charlie, but I don't think you can break into police files and that's the only place you're going to find any details," Kevin sighed.

"I don't know about that," Dorothy said thoughtfully. "The Alphas all got killed, right? I assume by vigilante justice. Well I know a lot of folks are assholes if their pups present. But not everyone reacts like that. So, surely, at least one of the Alphas had parents who cared enough to try to get the vigilantes prosecuted."

"That never works," Kevin pointed out. "The courts always kick cases like that out."

"Yeah, but it wouldn't stop a grieving parent at least attempting it. And to do that they'd need lawyers and the lawyers would have recorded all the itsy little details and I bet you could hack a law firm, Charlie."

~

Castiel was completely bemused by Daniel's position on the situation.

Despite being completely distraught and frequently sniffling loudly through the whole meeting as he tried to control his tears, he was absolutely firm that no action should be taken to simply snatch Dean out of harm's way.

"Dean said 'no'," he kept repeating whenever Castiel tried to convince him it was for the best. "When an Omegá says 'no' it must be honoured."

Ophriel rolled his eyes at his Grandé when Castiel looked at him for assistance. "If I could have convinced him, I wouldn't have needed to call you in," he muttered quietly.

Daniel, overhearing, shot his mate an angry look that had Ophriel flinching. Honestly, the Primá was at a total loss of how to handle Daniel's distress. He had, wickedly, almost wished for something else to happen to put Dean clearly in face of danger once more. He knew Daniel well enough to know that in the wake of something terrible happening to the young Omegá, Daniel would strive to temper his reactions in line with Dean's wishes but if Daniel had foreknowledge of something _about_ to happen to Dean, he wouldn't be able to stop himself jumping in to prevent it.

"Look, Daniel," Castiel said, "I respect what Dean told you in the hospital but I don't expect he had any idea at the time that his brother was going to turn into some kind of abusive drug addict. I'm sure he wouldn't say 'no' if we asked him the same question today."

Daniel stopped sniffling and looked up at him, eyes brightening with sudden hope. "You're right. We need to ask him again. I guess we just need to create a reason to get Dean alone. Perhaps if you press ahead with the rest of it, you could insist on the right to interview him as a witness or something. If we could get him isolated enough to get the pegs out of him, he would quickly become able to think straight."

Castiel nodded his agreement to the idea. His inner Primá chafed at the delay but, as Daniel said, Dean had said 'no' and unless Dean was in immediate danger, it wasn't justified to break faith with him.

So he'd go ahead with his idea of how to punish Sioux Falls for the ceremony and use that to create an opportunity to get Dean into Pack hands at least long enough to see whether the young Omegá could be convinced to abandon his brother after all.

~

Being Castiel Cainson’s Beta Wife was a privilege and an honour. It awarded Meg the highest position a Beta could achieve in Pack Land. Theoretically, because of the way Cain had divided his territory, it even put Meg on a totally even status with Colette Sethson. Not that Meg dwelt on that fact overmuch since she’d never test the theory of their equality in practice. She had the horrible suspicion that any confrontation with the older Beta would end bloody, probably with a knitting needle buried in her own skull. Meg didn’t underestimate the wily advantages of age and experience and she doubted Colette had maintained her iron grip over Cain’s pack hall merely because Chuck ‘liked’ her.

Nevertheless, aside from Colette, Meg pretty much was unassailable. There was was no one in Castiel’s Pack Hall who would have ever dreamed of criticising her had she been lax in her job. It’s highly unlikely even Castiel would have had much to say had she spent her days simply wandering around looking pretty like an Omega. Though, possibly, it might have occurred to him that something was amiss when the Pack ran out of food or coffee or even, god forbid, toilet roll.

“Shit. I totally forgot Toilet roll,” she muttered, flipping through the screens on her tablet to add a pallet of double-ply to the janitorial inventory.

“An oddly appropriate juxtaposition of sentence structure, but hardly an appropriate subject, petal,” Crowley complained.

“Multi-tasking is a venerable skill,” she countered, flipping back to the produce list. “Can you believe we got through eight cases of tinned prunes last month? Who the hell eats tinned prunes?”

“Presumably the same people using all the toilet roll,” he snickered. Then rolled his eyes as his bluetooth earphone buzzed. “Just a sec. Let me take this.”

Meg shrugged and continued to check through her household lists as he took his call.

“Talking of shit, I’ve got to go,” he announced, a few minutes later. “Problem at the office.”

She paused her typing long enough to frown down at him. “I’m not finished.”

“Then you’d better put your tablet down and get on with it, cupcake, because I really need to go.”

With a put upon sigh, Meg plonked her tablet down on the mattress, adjusted her position and sank lower onto his substantial cock. “You know I hate being rushed. Benny never fucks and runs.”

As Crowley began to grind his hips upwards, grasping the sides of her hips to hold her in place as he thrusted, he rolled his eyes. “I’m perfectly aware the only reason you’re sitting on me instead of Benny is that he’s out of town with Castiel.”

“That’s not strictly true,” Meg countered, deliberately squeezing hard enough around his flesh to make him yelp a little. “You’re here because Benny AND Victor are out of town.”

“You wound me, Mrs Cainson. Bad enough you treat me like nothing more than your personal toy but then you tell me you do so only out of necessity.”

“Slim pickings,’ Meg agreed. “Any port in a storm. Any cock in a cu…oh yes, just there, do that again but harder. Good boy.”

Crowley grunted and thrust harder, though the angle wasn’t conducive to substituting force for finesse. “You could help,” he pointed out. “Move a little.”

“If I wanted to get _myself_ off, you wouldn’t be here at all,” she countered. Then she gasped a little as he finally hit the sweet spot and for several minutes everything was forgotten except the urgency of flesh.

She arched in pleasure a final time, then scrambled up and off the bed.

“I haven’t finished,” he complained.

“I have,” she grinned.

“I feel so used,” he grumbled.

“You said you were in a hurry,” she reminded him.

Crowley sighed, rolled off the bed himself and reached for his pants. “Actually,” he said. “You might want to come along to Cain Crowley with me. I think it’s going to be a bit more interesting than contemplating the mystery of the missing prunes.”

“What’s happening?”

“Someone hacked Cain-Crowley’s mainframe last week. A very clever, very sneaky little hack through a backdoor which our IT department wasn’t even aware existed until it had already been breached. Obviously I fired the little fucker who left us vulnerable but, anyway, by the time we figured it out and shut the intruder down, several packets of data were accessed. It’s okay. Nothing too sensitive is left on the networked computers anyway. We store all the juicy stuff in off-line servers. But, obviously, just for day to day convenience we keep a certain amount of useful files on the mainframe and, from working out what files they did access, we have a pretty good idea of the bits they really wanted. Which, fortunately, wasn't anything sensitive. What was really interesting though was exactly what data they were after.

“So I’ve had a whole team working on it all week, trying to trace the hacker back to source. It wasn’t easy because they really covered their tracks well. They bounced through servers in India, China and even bloody Iceland and the trail apparently dead-ended somewhere in Nova Scotia. They were really good. But our guys were better. Although the originating IP address hasn’t been located, we have triangulated the signals to isolate the City the hacker really is in.”

“Forgive me saying this, Crowley, but narrowing it down to a City doesn’t seem like that particularly good a result to me.”

“Ah, admittedly, even though it’s a pretty small City,” Crowley smirked. “But what’s really interesting is _which_ City. We were hacked from Sioux Falls, Meg.”

"Fuck me!" Meg exclaimed.

"Just did," Crowley smirked.

She punched him in the shoulder. "No, seriously. This is mega. This is HUGE. Do they know about the plan? Do they know what the Packs are intending to do? Have you told CP about this?"

"Well, that's the thing, Meg. None of the information they were after had anything to do with any of that. I don't think this was a government hack, local or otherwise. If anything, it seems that someone has started investigating a completely different situation that we were completely unaware of before the hack forced us to see it for ourselves. Something that has nothing to do with the Omegá at all."

"Huh? You've lost me. If this hack had nothing to do with Dean, what significance is there to the origin being Sioux Falls?"

Crowley shrugged. "I don't know," he confessed. "But unless Sioux Falls is sitting over some kind of hell gate, it seems highly damned improbable that so much troublesome shit is originating from one tiny city. It's beginning to seem like the epicentre of a whole shed load of weirdly 'co-incidental' bullshit."

"What exactly was the hacker after?"

"A number of files relating to individual, unrelated incidents of rut rage. Case files that sprawl over several states and appeared, until the hack, to be completely unrelated. Cain-Crowley has hundreds of lawyers, Meg, and no-one centralises data from closed case files for comparison for obvious security and data-protection reasons, so it was only when we compiled a list of all the hacked records that we actually looked at them together, rather than individually, and saw some disturbing connections. If we hadn't been hacked, I doubt we would ever have seen the common themes running through the incidents."

"Why would Cain-Crowley be involved in rut rage incidents? I thought even the Betas don't attempt to try teen Alphas for rage related incidents. Why would lawyers be needed at all?"

"These are all cases relating to attempted prosecutions of vigilantes," Crowley clarified. "Sometimes the local cops don't just turn a blind eye to that kind of shit. In each of the cases that were hacked, someone had attempted to bring legal redress against someone who had taken the law into their own hands after a rage incident. Naturally we provide free legal assistance for that kind of case but it's always a waste of time and money because no Beta jury is ever going to convict someone for that kind of revenge attack, even though they know the dead pup was just a victim of his own biology."

"I can see that," Meg sighed despondently. "But I can't see the significance. Statistically speaking, even given the relatively small percentage of Alphas, there must always be a number of those cases happening simultaneously and given the closure of the rut houses, probably more now than for years. Sadly, by trying to save the Omegáres, we have inevitably put the Alphas under higher risk."

"We have," Crowley agreed. "But even as an Alpha myself, I accept it as a price worth paying. Even if a hundred Alpha lives have to be sacrificed for each Omegá saved then that's still acceptable collateral damage in my opinion."

"Saved from a rut house, maybe, but not 'saved' by any stretch of the imagination," Meg snarled. "I'd like to see the look on Dean Winchester's face if you ever try to tell him we 'saved' him. I just can't fucking believe what happened in Falls Park wasn't illegal."

"Even Rut houses aren't illegal," Crowley pointed out. "The only reason they've been closed in 80% of America is fear of Pack retribution. Castiel is going to make damned sure that from here on in using an Omegá for public entertainment is also seen as a highly dangerous and expensive practice. By the time he's finished, you can be damned sure something like that will never happen again."

"It's so fucking frustrating to know the only real way to hurt the bastards is in their pockets."

"Only until they go too far and they will. It's only a matter of time."

"And Dean pays the price."

"Remember, cupcake, it's a price he's chosen to pay. Let's not disrespect that."

"Yeah? I don't get it, Crowley. Why out of all of us is it Daniel who said no to just charging in there to rescue him?"

Crowley shrugged. "I guess he's the only one of us to really see it from an Omegáren point of view. He says that acting against Dean's clearly stated wishes would be even more offensive than leaving him there. Obviously he's hoping that Dean has changed his mind now. I think it's breaking his heart. He's got grandpups older than Dean. But it's a really big deal going against an Omegá's clearly stated 'no'. It would be as heretical as the ceremony itself.

"Daniel was so upset he destroyed the video. He didn't even let Ophriel see it. He said enough people had viewed what happened to Dean already without letting more eyes witness it. Castiel's annoyed but he gets where Daniel's coming from. He understands why Daniel couldn't bear the thought of it being used in evidence in some future trial. It's not like there aren't enough eyewitnesses to call on if the situation ever gets that far. Though obviously we're hoping to get him out of Beta hands long before enough harm is caused to him to require a conclave."

"But Castiel is definitely going to move against Sioux Falls City Council regardless?"

"By the time he's finished with them, they'll be lucky if they just get voted out of office. They'll probably end up lynched in their own City Hall once people work out exactly what a displeased Pack can legally do to its 'tenants'."

~

Every morning, without fail, Charlie waited in the school parking lot for Azazel Al'asfar's car to arrive.

Every morning, she ignored Sam's red eyed glare and warning growl to brightly chirp a cheery good morning to Dean.

And, every morning, Dean walked past her, walking with surprising grace despite his dead eyed stare, and not only failed to acknowledge her greeting but seemingly didn't notice she was there at all.

Except for the morning when he hesitated briefly, just a split-second between one breath and the next. And in that tiny, barely noticeable moment of hesitation, his brow furrowed into a brief gossamer fine frown of contemplation. Then, like it had never happened, his face fell back into bland indifference and he moved past her as silent and unseeing as usual.

But that was the moment Charlie knew beyond doubt that Dean _was_ fighting the drug.

That, even though it might take weeks or months for him to fully break through the hazed fog clouding his mind, he _would_ eventually succeed.

"Welcome back, bestie," she whispered.


	71. Chapter Sixty Seven

Azazel Al'Asfar had overplayed his hand and was stewing in an angry mire of resentful fear.

It was not a small thing to fail Lucifer Sethson.

He wasn't sure whether to lay the blame at Dean's feet or Sam's. Probably culpability lay with both of the brothers equally. Little fuckers. His previous amusement and even respect for his Omegá charge was now completely forgotten under the weight of his own instinct for self-preservation.

Obviously, failure was not an option and he had a good idea of how to get the situation back under control but resented being in the position of having to scramble around to put things right.

Worst of all he had to face the truth that, ultimately, he had inadvertantly caused the current crisis _himself_ by acting precipitously and thereby bringing the full attention of the Packs on Sioux Falls.

Of course, he had known the exhibition would draw the attention of the Packs. That was precisely why he had done it. The problem was that it hadn't worked out quite the way he'd intended and, consequently, he was now under the cosh time wise if he wanted to regain control of the situation.

And it was Sam's fault he'd acted so impulsively and Dean's fault he'd failed to achieve his objective, so he was pretty pissed at _both_ of them.

To be honest, nothing had gone the way he'd planned since the moment he'd met the Winchesters.

They were agents of Chaos, both of them seeming to have an innate talent for disrupting even the most carefully, intricately detailed plans and leaving them in tatters.

Sam's stubbornness had been the biggest surprise. But then, when planning his manipulations, Azazel hadn't factored in the fact that Dean would manage to somehow convince the younger pup that they were truly brothers. Azazel hadn't even conceived of any way in which Dean might achieve that. So Azazel had built his original plan on a foundation that was carefully based primarily on convincing Sam that Dean was not his 'real' brother, only to have the entire edifice collapse the moment Sam realised it wasn't true.

For most teen Alphas that wouldn't have fundamentally changed anything. Any wet hole usually did the trick for them. Sam though apparently had 'morals'. And although any teen Alpha might act without any regard to personal morality 'once', it was highly improbable they would repeat the offence. Most teen Alphas who attacked sisters or mothers in the 'rage' turned themselves over to the authorities and asked to be sent out of harms way, as soon as the rage faded enough for them to understand what they had inadvertently done.

Azazel wouldn't put it past Sam to do something equally stupid and self-destructive. Though it wasn't a given. Truth be told, Azazel had no idea at all how Sam might react in such a situation because Sam was, frankly, proving impossible to predict at all.

Whilst all teen Alphas had a tendency to simultaneously present two distinctly different personalities for their teenage years, Sam Winchester appeared to have at least four.

There was the expected usual Alpha; all horny lust and hormones, and there was the other Alpha; all 'Protector of the Weak and Oppessed'. Admittedly Alpha two was more a product of Azazel's own chemical interference than a naturally occurring phenomenon but that shouldn't have been a problem since Azazel could use the drugs to swiftly force a switch back and forth between Sam's Alpha states.

Why it was a problem to do so with any accurately predictable results was that Sam also appeared to have two equally conflicting non-Alpha personalities.

There was the expected human; all teenage resentment and sulky angst, and there was the other human; all worshipful and loving younger brother of Dean.

And Sam could, at any given time, display the properties of any single personality or even varied combinations of the four.

From one moment to the next Sam could be sulky and hormonal; or loving but angst ridden; or resentfully protective or even protectively loving. Attempting to know which of the manifestations of Sam's personality might take over at any given moment was an excercise in futility. And, contrary to expectation, the more Azazel attempted to govern Sam's moods with drugs, the less predictable he became.

It should have been clear-cut that Sam, like any _normal_  teenage Alpha, would automatically respond to ownership of an Omega by mounting him. Azazel accepted it was probably his own fault that Alpha one had been subjugated by Alpha two and, overall, that hadn't been a huge issue since it was possible to work with Human one. But then with the bombshell of Dean proving their familial connection, enough of Human two bled back into the mix and Sam, torn between all four opposing personalities, opted instead to simply 'do his duty' by Dean but otherwise avoid him altogether.

Sam had immediately transferred all his lustful feelings towards Ruby and although that had been exactly the role for which Ruby had been born and raised to perform, Sam wasn't supposed to develop those feelings _yet_.

So, of course, when Azazel had understood the significance of Dean's reactions to the artificial pheremones he had snatched at it as a way to kill a whole flock of birds in one fell swoop.

Instead of endlessly battling to control Sam's behaviour for months or years, he reasoned he could cut the whole process down to the bones and still achieve the desired end result from orchestrating the events of a single night.

It would even, he considered (because at that point he wasn't pissed at Dean yet), be better for the Omegá to just get everything over and done with in one incident.

Azazel's idea was to overdose Dean so heavily that he could practically drive a bus into his Flores without protest and equally to dope Sam and the other Alphas not with the drug that dampened the rage but with the other psychoactive one that would fire their rut rage into sudden overdrive and suppress Sam's inconvenient morals. Then Azazel would convince the local Council to hold a Creation Ceremony, starring Dean, and the whole event would conclude with every one of his Alphas mounting the Omega in public. Presumably in front of at least a couple of Pack spies.

The repercussions would be swift and glorious.

With that in mind, Azazel had put his plan in motion. He had arranged for the Ceremony to be performed and had prepared all his Alphas for their roles. Though, naturally, he had put it all forward to them as a 'fake' ceremony in which Sam would simply pretend to draw the Universe out of Dean by turning his back on the audience to conceal their view each time he picked up a globe from a box hidden under Dean's seat, then producing it to the audience with a flourish. He had even told Sam, when asked, that naturally Dean would still be wearing his bridle to conceal his Flores from view. "It's just a symbolic representation of a genuine Ceremony," he assured Sam. "Obviously not the real thing."

Thus he gave Sam no reason to mention it to Dean and, anyway, assured Sam that he, himself, would convince Dean to participate.

And, that done, he then went to work on repeatedly mentioning the amulet to Sam. He pointed out several times that it was highly inappropriate for an Omega to refuse a gift from his Alpha. Quite insulting really. It was, after all, such a lovely piece of jewellery and would look so nice around Dean's neck. "Do you think he just doesn't want to acknowledge himself as your Omegá ?" he asked, innocently, and watched Sam's eyes flare red.

And so Azazel had stacked all his dominoes in a careful row, arranging for Sam to place the necklace around Dean's neck on the afternoon of Shab-e Yalda, whilst Dean was made vulnerable to his approach because he was sitting on the mounting stool. Azazel had, unknown to Sam, already filled the hollow cavity inside the amulet with new fake pheromones.

He had, in fact, unwittingly filled it with so large a dose that any Omegá physically smaller than Dean would probably have suffered an instant fatal heart attack from such an onslaught of reactions to their potent effects. Fortunately for Azazel, Dean had both the body mass and physical strength to survive the assault, though it left him completely incapacitated.

Even though Dean survived the application of the sudden and dramatic overdose, his Flores immediately relaxed enough that the plug in his rectal passage dropped out and Sam, panicked, ran to tell Azazel that Dean had apparently snapped the plug in two and had, somehow, been left with its length inside himself.

Azazel had taken one look at the anal plug, realised it was not 'broken' but had been sabotaged, and the sudden understanding of what that meant had made him want to scream with fury.

His whole plan for the ceremony hadn't just depended on Dean having an open vagina but also a well-trained, thoroughly stretched ass. The minute he realised Dean was barely sufficiently stretched to even accept a Beta cock let alone an Alpha one, having never had anything larger than a number one peg anally inserted, was the moment his whole plan collapsed. With less than four hours before the ceremony there wasn't time to do anything about it. Dean's cunt, having been previously trained to accept a number six peg, wasn't going to have a problem providing the performance Azazel had promised the City Council. But any idea that any of the Alphas would be able to mount him anally on stage was completely out of the question.

Because of their imperative not to mount a resistant Omegá, no Alpha cock would be physically capable of forcing its way inside an Omegá ass that was not already sufficiently open in welcome.

It had been too late not to proceed with the ceremony as planned, though it had been touch and go on achieving the precise level of chemical assistance to encourage the Alphas to substitute a 'real' ceremony for the previously suggested symbolic one without actually pushing them into 'rage'. Gaining Sam's co-operation had been the most difficult and he'd simply resorted to a huge testosterone boost that was, still weeks later, being evidenced in Sam's behaviour.

And now, with the Packs sniffing around and threatening the Sioux Falls City Council with repercussions for the heretical nature of the event, Azazel highly suspected time was running out. He had to get Sam with the programme before it was too late.

Azazel hadn't wasted those weeks. He'd encouraged Sam to take advantage of Dean's passivity to slowly increase the size of the pegs Dean was now having correctly inserted as he used the mounting stool (which had, incidentally had the correct number six peg refitted) so Azazel was, at least, confident that Dean was now physically ready for his role.

All Azazel needed to do was somehow push Sam into accepting the idea of taking his 'care' of his Omegá to the next level before Azazel ran out of time completely.

Sam's sixteenth birthday party seemed an ideal opportunity to do so.

 

~

 

It would be quite obviously false to suggest that Sam Winchester wasn't always aware that Azazel had access to a drug that somehow caused his brother to descend into a state of complete sexual compliance.

And undoubtedly he knew from his own experience that it was possible for a small but fully effective dose of that drug to be secreted in Dean's All-Father amulet.

So perhaps it is only sophistry to say that he wasn't responsible for making the decision to utilise the drug and the necklace to manipulate Dean's behaviour.

Yet it is equally true that in very many ways he was not responsible at all.

He honestly didn't _know_  that Azazel had replenished the pheromones when he placed the amulet around Dean's neck.

He was completely unaware, also, that he too was being chemically manipulated which, added to the betrayal of his own body's hormonal imperatives, left little room for intellectual reasoning to triumph over base instincts.

And too, perhaps a little less forgivably, he was subject to a certain degree of influence from Azazel's more straightforward manipulation of Sam's ego. There is no escaping the truth that Sam was basking in the thrill of finally being the 'favoured son'. What small amount of free will remained in Sam beyond the external pressures of the chemical and hormonal influences that pressed down on him with unbearable weight, may have proved completely inadequate even had he attempted to utilise it.

But if it could be stated with any truth that Sam did have an addiction, it was not to any drug. It was simply to the unfamiliar feeling of being praised and valued and set firmly in centre stage. Though Mary had been a loving mother to both the boys and had done her best to treasure both of them equally, it is undeniably true that Dean received the lion's share of her care and attention simply because of the vulnerability his designation accorded him. Whilst her 'favoritism' of Dean was inadvertant, it was real, so perhaps Sam's resentment of the situation was somewhat justified.

In any event, Sam was definitely somewhat 'addicted' to being Azazel's clear and obvious favourite out of the brothers.

But, still, even had he the wherewithal to resist the lure of Azazel's snake-like tongue whispering multitudinous justifications for his own behaviour, it is doubtful whether it would ultimately have made a great deal of difference in the scheme of things. Sam would still have fallen into the pit. He still would have acted the same way.

It would just, perhaps, have been better for his own soul's sake had he tried a just a little harder to resist. For his own peace of mind it might have been better that he could have looked back later on what happened and know, absolutely, that he was a much a truly innocent victim in the events as his brother. Even if knowing that would have made little or no difference to a 'Pack' perception of his guilt, still Sam himself would have retained a personal sense of innocence.

But ultimately nothing would have changed.

By the time of Sam's sixteenth birthday party, Alastair had become so practiced in tweaking his drugs to specific purposes that no resistance on Sam's part would have been likely to have succeeded in stopping anything anyway.

So, if any blame can be accorded to Sam it is simply this; that ultimately Azazel did not have to return to Alastair for yet another iteration of the drug to break through Sam's final resistance. By the time Azazel was ready to press forwards with the next step of his plan, Sam had already effectively folded his hand and conceded defeat.


	72. Chapter Sixty Eight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Castiel plays his hand, the Losers get smarter and Sam's birthday party still looms threateningly over the horizon.

There was barely a Law, Pack or Beta, that Castiel didn't know as well as the back of his hand.

That was why he hadn't wasted more than a moment of cursing on what the Betas had done to Dean and had instead concentrated purely on the heretical nature of the ceremony itself.

Because it was only the charge of heresy that had legs.

Sickeningly, even had the young Omegá spent a whole week on that stage simply being mounted by a series of Alphas for the voyeuristic pleasure of a Beta crowd there would have been no redress available in law. An accusation of 'rape' was legally impossible in the case of an Omegá unless it could be proven that the consent was forced (as in the case of Claire) which is why the heinous rut houses were also 'legal'.

Dean's docking, unlike Claire's, had been done at a 'legal' age under the Beta Docking Law.

Even Becky Rosen, despite her appalling actions towards the young Omegá, had only been successfully passed over for Pack justice because of her witnessed offence to Daniel.

The more consideration Castiel gave to the laxity of previous Grandé Alpha Primáres in allowing the current legal situation to develop within any society governed by Beta Law , the more Castiel was convinced that all his predecessors deserved damn good kicks up their asses.

Many of the offences against Dean Winchester had already been recorded into Pack annals, ready for action to be taken should any of the perpetrators ever make the mistake of setting foot in Pack Land. Given sufficient time and patience, the Pack were certain each and every one of the primary culprits would be eventually 'tricked' into making that mistake since something as innocuous as accepting a lift in a car personally owned by a Grandé could, after all, be considered to be 'entering Pack Land'.

But, realistically, by the laws of Beta Land, no one to date had been guilty of an indictable offence against Dean.

Heresy on the other hand, whilst on the surface also not indictable under Beta Law because atheism was legally protected in Beta Land, was a charge that Castiel could make extremely effective use of.

The Packs cared less whether Free Betas adhered to scripture or perverted it in their own culture. The Packs considered that what the Betas did or thought in the privacy of their own homes and churches was beyond their control and largely irrelevant so had only previously acted if a case of Ablest religious perversion had been used against an Omegá or Alpha outside of direct Pack protection.

And, admittedly, had the Creation Ceremony used a fake inanimate representation of the Omadonna as a stage prop it would have still been perceived as heretical but no Pack action would have been taken.

So it was not without merit when, during their discovery conference, the Lawyer representing Sioux Falls accused Cain Crowley of using the charge of Heresy merely as a back door method of punishing the City for using a real life Omegá in the ceremony.

Castiel, however, didn't bother to deny it. "It's irrelevant why my clients are choosing to pursue this matter. It is not their motivations that will be on trial should this reach a court. But it's a moot point anyway. There will be no trial. The Packs are disinterested in pursuing criminal charges. As far as my clients are concerned, the performance of this act of Heresy in a public open-air location means it was not done within the boundaries of bricks and mortar that might, possibly, be considered Free Beta territory. It occurred directly on Pack owned land."

"This happened in Beta Land," the lawyer protested angrily.

Castiel raised a condescending eyebrow.

"You are allowing your legal interpretation of the situation to be confused by jargon, Beta 'Land' is merely a descriptive term. The LAND itself is still owned by the Packs. The entire continent is a Pack fiefdom and although Betas hold immense swathes of 'land', their tenure is merely as fiefs. The resumption of a fief, whilst unusual, is not a subject of legal debate."

"You cannot be serious," the lawyer spluttered.

"I assure you, I do not consider this a joking matter," Castiel replied. "It is the judgement of the Packs that eminent domain is the only way to address this insult. I have been asked to serve notice of eviction. Your clients have six months to entirely vacate the mesne-fief that calls itself the City of Sioux Falls. My people will serve the necessary documents by end of business today."

"They can't do this. It's preposterous to even suggest it," the Beta protested.

"The Packs of South Dakota are perfectly legally entitled to demand resumption of the land which is their property," Castiel stated unapologetically. "Eminent domain has always rested in Pack hands. The generosity of the Packs in allowing Free Beta society to dwell on Pack-owned land has never been accorded as a benefice. The application of the principle of escheat has always been accepted within Beta Law and has been firmly established by precedent."

The City Council's Beta Lawyer glowered with fury, his cheeks stained port red with temper. "Escheat cannot be applied in this case. The City has always paid its fief to the local Packs and fiefs have always been considered inheritable as long as the fees are paid on time and in full. I challenge you to prove there has ever been a failure on the part of Sioux Falls to adhere to its payments."

Castiel shrugged carelessly and offered the Beta an evil smirk. "Leaving aside the obvious fact that any felonious act enables escheat to be enacted, regardless of whether tithes have been paid, let's address the inheritable legitimacy of the fief itself. The fief that originally covered Sioux Falls was accorded to the Beta governor of Pierre only. The fact that Pierre enfeoffed a portion of its fief to the formation of this City means you hold only a mesne-fief which has never been inheritable."

"Sioux Falls was established in 1856. I would argue that holding even a mesne-fief for over a hundred and fifty years sets a firm legal precedent for inheritability," the Beta resorted, though he was clearly flustered by Castiel's argument.

"Well, you could try that point in court and see how well it holds water," Castiel allowed, with a condescending smile, "but no subinfeudation of tithed land has ever been previously ratified by any court, either Beta or Pack, so you'll struggle to find any supporting precedent."

"No precedent exists simply because there has never been any previous suggestion that Afterlehen is unacceptable to the Packs," the Beta blustered. "The division of State wide fiefdoms into internal mesne-fiefs, if you want to be unnecessarily precise about the terminology, is simply an internal bureaucratic convenience for Beta society. It does not negate the fact that the entire territory of South Dakota is legally encompassed by one single fief. You cannot act against Sioux Falls without acting against the entirety of the fiefdom."

"It was considered," Castiel agreed amiably. "However, when I put the situation to the Governor of South Dakota and suggested the punitive measures might be applied State-wide, he was at pains to emphasise that in his opinion Sioux Falls was accorded an appenage and was thereby alienated from the State fief and therefore was obliged to stand or fall on its own. I regret to inform you that the Governor has clearly chosen to disassociate himself from you entirely. But don't take my word for it. Feel free to call him yourself."

"Look. We're both reasonable men," the lawyer wheedled, reluctantly accepting that Castiel's legal position was sound. "We both know there's no possible way the Packs seriously intend to evict a whole City full of people."

"And their belongings," Castiel added cheerfully. "The Pack expect the return of their land to the condition it was before occupancy. Every brick of every building is to be removed. I think they might permit the road infrastructure to remain in place but that's probably going to be the extent of their compromise. The Pack is very respectful of Beta Law. They would not wish their rightful reclamation of eminent domain to be perceived as any form of 'asset-grab'. The former tenants of Sioux Falls are therefore to be encouraged to take all of their personal property with them when they leave."

"This is preposterous. You expect an entire City to relocate itself in six months?"

"It's a very generous offer," Castiel argued. "The Law only demands three months but the Pack accepts that would be logistically improbable."

"We'd need no less than five years," the Beta demanded. "Ten would be more reasonable."

"The former landlords might be persuaded to allow a little leeway in exchange for certain considerations," Castiel suggested.

The Beta lawyer glowered.

"Okay, let's cut to the chase. What exactly do the Packs want to make this whole thing go away entirely?"

"Unfortunately, the only thing that would satisfy the Packs entirely would be out of the power of any local government to offer. There's no point you writing a check the Packs can't cash. Any deal you present that could be overturned by central Beta Government is pointless. So this isn't going to 'go away'. The best case scenario for you is that you might buy extra time for the evacuation. Who knows, it might be possible to negotiate a five or ten year timescale. But your offer to my clients would have to be particularly attractive for me to even bother presenting it to them."

The Beta huffed with anger but shrugged his acceptance of Castiel's point.

"So," he said. "What do you want that local government can deliver?"

~

  
"Guess what?" Charlie exclaimed excitedly, bursting into the library at a near run. "He smiled at me today. Actually smiled. Sure, it was just a little smile but for a moment, at least, he actually saw me and I swear he knew who I was."

"That's great," Garth agreed, beaming at her in response.

"Maybe it was just wind," Krissy muttered grumpily.

"Don't be a bitch," Dorothy chided. "It's great news. It means this drug hasn't wiped his mind completely if he recognised Charlie. We had begun to wonder whether it had caused actual brain damage."

"It's taken weeks just to get one single smile," Krissy countered. "At this rate we'll be pensioners before he graduates to words."

"I don't think so," Kevin said thoughtfully. "Now he's starting to break through, it will probably happen quickly. I think whatever Azazel doped him with caused some kind of initial literal, neurogenic physiological shock as well as a psychological one. Everyone's being so distracted by the fact he appears to be behaving more like a traditional Omegá now than the near-Alpha we know Dean to really be that no one is considering how unlike an Omegá he's really acting. I'm not meaning to be judgemental, but when an Omegá is genuinely all sexed up, they're supposed to be randy little bunnies offering their asses at any passing Alpha. Dean might be...um... evidently displaying the physical evidence that he seems to be enjoying being pegged but that's all internal reactions, not external, if you know what I mean."

"I know exactly what you mean," Charlie agreed. "You get the distinct impression he's in some state of permanent sexual satisfaction, but it's all internalised. Omegares are supposed to be touch hungry but he seems indifferent even to Sam. Maybe you're right about the shock. Why would a sex drug intended to make him more receptive turn him into a zombie unless it somehow went a bit wrong? Even rut house Omegáres are active participants not passive sex dolls."

"It's Sam's birthday today, isn't it?" Dorothy asked.

"Yeah," Charlie agreed miserably. "My gut's telling me we've run out of time. Sam's having a party tonight at Azazel's house and he's invited all his friends and even Gordon Walker. Dean always told me the reason I couldn't go visit him was that Azazel said it wasn't fair for me to visit if Sam wasn't allowed to take his friends home. But suddenly Azazel has no problem with a half dozen Alphas coming to the house?"

"It stinks," Garth said. "Maybe we should all crash the party, make sure nothing happens to Dean."

"I can't see Al'asfar letting us through the door," Krissy said and they all grunted in reluctant agreement.

"I've had an idea," Kevin said. "It isn't an immediate solution to anything but you know that law firm you hacked, Cain-Crowley? Well, it's Pack owned, isn't it? How about instead of breaking into the mainframe to take data out, we break in and add something? Our main problem is we can't prove any of our suspicions and there's no one we can approach anyway. Why don't we put a dossier together of everything we know and suspect and simply give it to the Pack Lawyers? Even if they don't believe us about the Alphas, they'd surely investigate a suggestion of Omegá abuse."

"Can't we just phone or email or write them like normal people?" Krissy asked.

"Cain-Crowley are legally only allowed to advertise a land line number for initial contacts. That's to ensure the government can listen in to calls. And we all know post is intercepted at borders. You have to assume post and emails to Pack institutions in Beta Land are intercepted too. There's only one safe way to get the information to them and that's by planting it directly into their computers."

"It's a good idea but I don't think it's possible. I got kicked out, remember, and they will have closed the back door I used. Still, I guess I don't actually need to aim for the mainframe itself just to get a file uploaded. The firm has hundreds of lawyers. At least one of them must be breaking the firm's IT protocols so they can surf porn or do a bit of online gambling at work. I just need to find one vulnerable computer."

"I'll start putting the file together," Kevin said, with a huge grin. "You start hunting for a lawyer who spends his lunch hour on Busty Asian Beauties."

  
~


	73. Chapter Sixty Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you are in any way sensitive or squeamish, when you get to the asterisks just immediately skip to the end notes for a brief summary of what you missed.

Charlie had been both right and wrong to claim Dean had recognised her that morning,

Certainly, Dean was no longer so completely entrenched in simply surviving the eternal hellfire of his own nerve endings firing constant, competing neural signals that trapped him so deep inside his own head that paying attention to anything except simply placing one foot in front of another at a time was too complicated a concept to grasp and hold.

Had Azazel understood the true potency of his brother’s artificial pheromones when directed precisely at the one human being they had been originally designed to ensnare, he would have slipped no more than a half dozen droplets inside the amulet. A little more, admittedly, than the couple of drops that Sam had previously used but considerably less than the full ounce he had actually secreted inside the amulet.

Alastair would not have made the same mistake but Azazel was not a scientist. When Alastair had advised him to use a tiny amount, Azazel had interpreted that to mean a thimble-full, not the few droplets from a pipette which Alastair had actually meant by the statement.

Pheromones, by design, were meant to be wafted as invisible vapour, mere traces of particles drifting in the air. Even in a room heavy with pheromonal secretions, the pheromones could only be counted as parts in a million. Having an ounce of concentrated pheromones, even sealed in an almost airtight container so close to his skin, had caused parts in a hundred to overwhelm him.

And, since that slow steady seepage of pheromones was continuing to leak out of the amulet in a steady state, forming an invisible but potent cloud around his body, Dean had been suffering the effects of permanent constant arousal ever since. Despite external perception, Sam had not changed the pegs Dean wore when attending school. He still habitually attended classes wearing the bridle. The difference noted in his behaviour was simply that he had a tendency to sit and gently rock back and forth on the curved Flores plate of the device, deliberately (though subconsciously) alternating the internal pressure points of the bridle, so that a loop of opposing sensations occurred inside his groin that was indeed similar to the effects of a ridged anal peg.

Consequently, periodically the self stimulation would build to a gradual crescendo and a little of the mounting pressure would release with the subtle but unmistakable vision of his body abruptly stiffening briefly then shuddering through an understated but obvious orgasm. Just a shivering of his limbs and perhaps a slight gasp emerging from his mouth, an event so delicate in execution that it could, indeed, be mistaken for a little 'wind'.

It had proved somewhat distracting for the pupils in Sam's classes and yet had been far too subtle for anyone to decry Dean's behaviour as unacceptable for public consumption.

Despite that truth, that Dean's body was being assaulted permanently by a slow but steady continual overdose of pheromones which were causing a biological response that was causing physiological reactions that would have stolen his ability to apply any degree of self-control over his impulses to satisfy his sexual arousal, there was inarguably no reason the amulet's effects should have stolen his mind completely.

As Kevin had identified, it would have been more natural, given the urgency of Dean's arousal, for him to have been wantonly presenting his ass to the school Alphas in invitation than drifting around in a near zombie state that seemingly left him unable to perceive any external opportunity to release his internal pressure.

So it was not the contents of the amulet that had caused Dean's psyche to shatter into a thousand shards, leaving him dead eyed and senseless.

It had been a different act of pure carelessness on Azazel's part.

Azazel had been clumsy when filling the amulet and had left heavy traces of the pheromones deposited all over the external surface of the metal that had touched Dean’s flesh and they had consequently been absorbed instantly into his skin. The effect had been akin to several dabs of the pheromones affecting him simultaneously. Given that one single dab had effected his performance in the hospital theatre, it was hardly surprising that with the direct on-skin application of several dabs at once, the subsequent assault on his body had been of almost fatal intensity.

He had little or no recollection of Shab-e Yalda. The whole incident had the vague unreal quality of a fever-dream, just flashes of impossible memories, nightmarish images of himself somehow whelping the whole damned universe and in Dean’s head those were not symbolic images. He did not remember birthing a globe representing the moon but, somehow, remembered birthing the actual moon. And the recollection was multi-layered, almost like the memory of a memory and it was so immense and impossible and improbable that his mind skittered away in terror every moment that he attempted to reach for enlightenment, so that he was endlessly chasing around a maze in his own head, lost and afraid, crashing into dead ends and confusion.

So trying to think at all, when all his synapses seemed to be firing at once but his thoughts were scattering in all different directions like terrified rabbits, was difficult enough without his body also betraying him so badly.

Somehow, his Flores had woken with a vengeance. It was as though the entire centre of his body was afire with a swirling, seething, churning pool of laval heat. From his abdomen to his pelvic floor, his body literally felt as though it was on fire. A burning, searing, agonising howl of raw nerve endings. Not just on the surface of his skin but from deep within his flesh. It literally felt as though acid had been poured over his Flores and deep inside his vagina. Even his womb screamed with an eternal agonised roar of empty hunger.

In self-preservation, instinctively aware that no human psyche could possibly withstand such constant unbearable agony, Dean had immediately 'switched off’, had somehow burrowed his consciousness deep inside his own head, escaping the unbearable pain by simply refusing to face it at all. His mind had gone to ground like a frightened animal, burying itself so deeply from reality that it had taken him weeks to slowly, painfully, even begin to drag himself out of the hole he had hidden within.

And, in fairness, the times it had been easiest to make progress during that slow, painful ascent back towards sanity, had been the hours he spent in the basement with Sam. Because his inability to reason made him incapable of seeking external relief for his aching needs, it was only the application of that relief without care for his 'consent' that allowed it to happen at all. Left completely alone, abandoned fully to his own devices, he might never have dragged himself back to sufficient sanity to fight the 'natural' effects of the pheromones at all.

When his body was offered external relief from its 'natural' cravings, when its hunger was sated with the feel of Sam’s hands tattooing a rhythm on his buttocks or the comforting slide of a peg into his cunt or his ass, when the raw screams of his passages were soothed by the pulsing pleasure they could wrest from those invaders, it was in those hours that his beleaguered mind had the opportunity to take that release of the pressure of physical need to effect its own gradual escape from the dark prison of his own making towards a light that promised hope.

It was blue.

Blue like sky winking through to him through tiny cracks in a ceiling.

The light he sought was a cool azure blue that would quench the raging fire that burned in his loins like pouring chilled icy pure water into himself.

Although that understanding was ethereal and nebulous, more instinct than intellect, in the touch of Sam’s hands against his heated flesh he felt the first tendrils of understanding that if he could only find his way upwards towards the blue light, it would offer an enlightenment worth fighting his fear.

And so, though no justification could ever be offered for the events that occurred on the night of Sam's sixteenth birthday, and it would be obscene to suggest that the ends justified the means, it is inarguably true that it was the intense nature of the assault on Dean's physical body that created the perfect storm which enabled his mind to finally break the shackles placed on it on Shab-e Yalda.

It was the intensity with which his pheromonally driven compulsions were sated that removed the entire distraction of biological imperatives and finally enabled Dean's mind to break free and claw its way out of the pit it had been buried inside for weeks.

Yet, lest there be any doubt whatsoever, although it was the events of the party that caused Dean to break through so dramatically that his return to sanity was a near instantaneous occurrence, it was in no way necessary that it be done that way.

Dean had already been gaining ground. Perhaps his slow, gradual ascent had been akin to scaling a cliff face only with the aid of sheer willpower, as his fingers clawed for purchase and dragged him upwards inch by torturous inch. But left alone, with only his own determination and regular platonic assistance from Sam to help cool the raging fire in his Flores, Dean would still have eventually have recovered from Azazel's terrible mistake without any further external factors coming into play.

So it did not have to happen.

It was not an inevitable event.

All the party achieved, in truth, was a vast change of timescale and a completely altered direction in which both Dean and Sam's lives moved in the wake of Dean's sudden 'recovery'.

Oh, and it obviously affected the direction of a few other lives but that was simply collateral damage in the grand scheme of things.

******

skipping point

******

As already stated, Dean had already begun the slow scaling of the pit wall by the evening of Sam's birthday.

Whilst it would be a vast exaggeration to suggest he was lucid, he certainly was no longer a totally passive passenger in his own body. He was beginning to bear witness to his own behaviour even if he was still incapable of controlling it. He was aware, for instance, of Charlie's morning greetings and although still incapable of truly identifying her as his friend had developed sufficient understanding that her face was something pleasurable to see.

He was also, at some level, understanding that the times he was spending in the basement with Sam were also good and pleasurable and even healing. Sam's touches were, somehow, soothing the hurt of his wounded psyche and easing him towards the blue.

So on that evening, as he followed Sam down the stairs to the basement not merely with passive obedience but also an innocent anticipation, he was aware enough to note that, peculiarly, Azazel accompanied their descent.

And it niggled at him as a wrongness, even though the thought was too ethereal to fully grasp, and he hesitated briefly in the doorway of the basement, a brief frown of indecision ghosting over his features, but he tottered forwards regardless, his momentum encouraged by a gentle push between his shoulder blades and as he saw the spanking bench and his body flooded with the endorphins of anticipatory pleasure he forgot completely that Azazel's presence in the room was 'wrong'.

He folded himself over the bench , thrusting his buttocks up in invitation, even wiggling his hips with a little eager excitement at the promised relief.

Sam stepped forward as always, and released the bridle harness and the entire device dropped easily from Dean's Flores which had opened enough, merely from the promise of the spanking bench, to release the bridle in anticipation of a far more satisfying invasion to come.

And if his eyes were a little more scarlet than normal, and glazed with the effects of the drug which encouraged rage rather than the drug which suppressed  it, there was otherwise nothing unusual in Sam's careful preparation of his brother for their usual nightly ritual than perhaps a little urgency driven by his knowledge he was short of time if he were to attend Dean's needs before the first of his guests arrived.

But as Dean dropped his head onto the cushioned headrest, ready to brace himself for the welcome touch of Sam's cool blue hands, he unwittingly touched the single dab of pheromones that Azazel had applied to the leather earlier.

Just one single almost microscopic amount this time but enough, added to the cloud that already emitted constantly from the amulet to knock him clear off the cliff side and plummeting heavily back to the foot of the 'pit'.

One sniff of the additional pheromones and the ground Dean had gained since Shab-e Yalda was wiped out in one fell swoop. It was as though, just as a little clarity was returning to his drunken brain, Dean had imbibed yet another full bottle of neat alcohol, sending him plummeting back down into blind, animalistic state where higher brain functions ceased entirely. His vision blurred, his thoughts muddled and disjointed and his Flores started to throb with renewed hot, pulsing urgency.

A thick hot gush of slick filled his cunt and the minute it touched the sensitive puckered edge of his Flores, Dean could feel himself opening wider, the internal labial petals of his flower engorging with blood and thrusting outwards, stretching his Flores so far open that he could feel cold air racing inside both his passages. His knees weakened and he collapsed heavily against the bench, instinctively thrusting his ass higher up in invitation, proudly and wantonly displaying his flower now rather than his buttocks.

The internal labia of his Flores pulsed, fat and glistened with slick, pushing further outwards to create an inner lining that visibly throbbed in invitation and Sam gulped and gasped with arousal as the engorged flesh around Dean's opening seemed to pulse in inviting waves and slick literally began to gush out of its interior in a silver, highly scented stream.

And in that moment that Dean's desperate (if artificially produced) need and Sam's primal (also somewhat artificial) hunger merged to produce an event that had probably been inevitable since the moment they were born.

And the tragedy was not that it happened at all but in how it happened. Not as an act of love between two brothers but as a base, animalistic mindless rut between two heavily drugged victims who were both raped through the act by the Beta, Azazel who stood there witnessing, facilitating and encouraging their act of union.

It was not this act for which Sam would be found later accountable.

It was Azazel who helped Sam remove his pants when Sam's own blind urge to mount Dean stole his ability to even remember how to unfasten a zipper. Had Azazel been absent, Sam may have remained roaring in confusion as he dry humped frantically against Dean's buttocks, unable to comprehend why his cock was trapped behind layers of fabric that were preventing him from easing Dean's needful moans.

Freed with Azazel's aid, Sam's thick, substantial cock sprang into rigid attention, its engorged length sliding without resistance into the hot, pulsating flesh, greedily swallowed into the dark depths of his brother's welcoming ass and Sam thrust just once into the channel that welcomed him without resistance yet somehow it immediately locked down to capture him with such force that it was impossible for Sam to withdraw.

Dean's ass was not a hole that could be fucked. It was a vicious trap, an unbreakable vice, that clung to Sam's flesh with enough greed to wring sensations of almost agonising pleasure through every inch of Sam's cock.

It felt to Sam that Dean's labial petals automatically measured the size and length of the invader and then tightened automatically to become a perfect fitting, inescapable glove. Dean's flower had lured him with its slick shined invitation only to tighten greedily and hold him inside with enough vacuuming resistance to simply suck his sperm out of him.

It was less like fucking a Beta like Ruby and more like than having the best, hottest, tightest ever blowjob.

Sam roared and howled, torn between intense pleasure and unbearable pain as Dean's passage squeezed and sucked and pummelled his cock with its pulsing, insatiable hunger, and he thought his balls might simply implode as their contents were drained by the powerful vacuum of Dean's suctioning flesh.

It hurt so much it felt as though the skin of his cock was being peeled away by the pressure. It hurt beyond anything in Sam's experience or imagination. And yet, somehow, it was, beyond doubt, so fucking pleasurable that Sam thought he might just have an aneurism and die whilst still impaled inside Dean's hungry hole.

"You see," Azazel hissed into his ear, as he shock and trembled, and his whole body felt so weak under Dean's assault that he realised the only reason he was able to remain standing was that his weight was being held by the fulcrum of his own trapped flesh, "An Omegá is designed to be the most perfect, insatiable whore. Surely now you understand how wrong it's been of you to deny him what he needs for so long, Sam. He's begged you for this. Begged you! And yet, you've so selfishly refused him what he wants, what he needs. You've denied him, Sam. Not only your own attention but that of anyone else. Aren't you shamed, Sam? Don't you regret your own selfishness?"

"Yes," Sam sobbed, as Dean pulled and sucked and squeezed every last drop out of him, his pulsing hole a hungry leviathan that drained Sam's balls with merciless greed.

"So what are you going to do, Sam? Are you finally old enough to take responsibility? To stop just calling yourself his Alpha and actually BE his Alpha? Accept that Dean wants this and needs this and loves this?"

"Yes," Sam gasped. "Dean wants this. Dean needs this. Dean loves this."

"Yes," Azazel hissed. "This is what Dean needs. What every Omegá needs and this is what you will give him, Sam, isn't it, Because you love Dean, don't you?"

"Yes."

"Say it, Sam. Tell Dean. Show Dean."

"I love you, Dean," Sam gasped and, as though in direct response, Dean's anal passage squeezed one last time, crushing Sam's cock with one final brutal caress, and then Dean's sphincter relaxed, expelling him completely with such force that Sam collapsed heavily, his own ass impacting painfully with the floor.

As he sat there, stunned, panting for breath, his cock red raw and shrunken almost fearfully between his thighs, Sam realised with near horror that Dean's ass had already begun to wriggle enticingly once more.

It did not even occur to him in that moment that Dean's cunt was empty, had been empty through the entirety of his anal mounting and that, perhaps, pegging Dean's vaginal passage might have reduced some of the viciousness of the assault on his own flesh.

All he was capable of understanding in that moment was although he couldn't envisage the idea of never mounting Dean again, because that kind of pleasure was worth any amount of pain, any repeat wouldn't be an option for a considerable while because his own cock and balls were currently rapidly attempting to shrink back into his own body to protect themselves.

And he remembered, for the first time, how their Sire had declared that attending a rut house was not necessarily a fully pleasurable experience.

"I've had a wonderful idea for the party," Azazel said, with a conspiratorial grin.

Sam growled, low in his throat, certain the Beta was going to suggest he allowed the other Alphas to share in his riches. Even faced with the certain knowledge that he appeared physically incapable of satisfying Dean's needs alone, Sam still had absolutely no desire to share his bounty with anyone else.

"He's MY Omegá," he snarled, baring his teeth warningly.

"Of course he is," Azazel purred. "I wasn't suggesting you should share him. I just thought of a fun way to show the others just what they're missing out on."

As Azazel outlined his idea for how Dean could participate in the party, Sam's eyes blazed like hot coals.

"It won't harm him though?"

"Of course not," Azazel assured him. "He'll love it. Best way to cool the fire in his cunt and give your party a really unforgettable wow factor, don't you think?"

And despite the rage surging through his veins, it was Sam's agreement that he did think the plan was an acceptable one that was his first decision that evening that could not be purely blamed on Azazel's drugs.

Because Sam had enough control over his body to spend the next several minutes carrying the chair designed for preparing an Omegá's Flores up out of the basement into the living room of the house, and then encouraging a glazed-eyed Dean to mount the stairs and seat himself in the contraption even though Dean only did as he bade in clear expectation that Sam was planning to immediately mount him again.

Sam was not lost in rage as he filled the cooler with the items Azazel had apparently prepared earlier and placed the deep punch bowl on the floor under Dean's raised ass, because with Dean restrained in the chair, his knees spread wide and strapped to his shoulders, his torso tilted back to expose his entire Flores, it might have been logistically difficult for Sam to mount him but not actually impossible and yet he managed to totally ignore the lure of Dean's mewling need.

And so when the Specs and Gordon Walker arrived at the house a little later, they walked in to the amazing sight of a fully exposed, restrained Omegá howling in desperate need in the middle of Azazel's living room.

And scarlet flared in all of their eyes but, thanks to a small diffuser in the corner of the room discretely pumping out the calming drug, none of them simply roared and leapt onto the completely vulnerable Omegá. They just prowled around, sniffing and snarling and growling with intense excitement.

"It's a drinking game," Azazel told them all, with a big, sly grin, apparently uncaring that none were of a legal age to drink anyway.

Azazel threw open the cooler, which contained an array of frozen pegs in two sizes.

"The big pegs are fruit juices. The small one are shots. It's all 'soft' ice, obviously. You pick a big peg and a small one at random and Dean will kindly prepare you a frozen cocktail. But you can't be rude. If he makes you a drink you are obliged to drink it. The more you can drink, the more fun you can have with him."

~

For Azazel, though one has to wonder what kind of sick imagination he had to so careful design the scenario, the event had nothing to do with any attempt to humiliate or degrade the Omegá in his charge.

He simply wanted him mounted by as many of the Alphas as possible in the shortest amount of time and, having failed to even cause Dean to lose his virginity at all before that night despite having all of Alastair's drugs at his disposal, he'd decided to throw the towel in on narcotic influences and go for the time honoured tradition of simply getting a room full of horny teenagers blind-drunk on old-fashioned alcohol.

Azazel had set the electronic diffuser on a timer so it would switch off soon after the teens arrived, allowing the room to gradually return to normal as the calming drug dissipated. Meanwhile, as the sound of crushing ice continually filled the room, and the punch bowl filled with more and different alcoholic concoctions that were disappearing down throats almost as fast as Dean's Flores could produce them, the laughter of the teenagers was becoming both more raucous and more cruel.

The discussions were returning inevitably, over and over to the idea of Sam allowing his 'friends' the opportunity to experience Dean's Flores for themselves. And as the Party progressed, and the alcohol flowed, and the rage diffusing drug dissipated, Sam's angry denials were gradually being replaced by reluctant amusement at his friends persistence and even, possibly, a jovial bonhomie that was replacing his initial definitive resistance with a definite 'maybe'.

Azazel was unsure whether it was the alcohol, the rage or simple teenage recklessness that prevented any of the Alphas expressing any hesitation at the idea of inserting their most tender anatomy into something that was managing to crush solid pegs of ice into slushies right before their eyes.

But then, wilful blindness was not only an Alpha trait.

Azazel should possibly have had a clue himself from his offhand comment to Sam that the ice would cool the fire in Dean's cunt.

He probably hadn't meant the words literally.

And yet, for Dean, that was exactly the effect of having numerous frozen pegs dually inserted over the period of several hours.

The blazing acidic lava that had burned with such intense agonising fire inside him since the horrific, near fatal overdose on Shab-e Yalda was fractionally eased with each freezing insertion. Nerve ends so raw that they had screamed incessantly for weeks became numb with cold, their sharp edges blunted, their stabbing needles cushioned by a spreading lethargic hypothermic blanket that smothered the flames and banked them into controllable smouldering embers.

By the time the last ice was crunched and the last cocktail drunk, by the time Sam was laughing too hard in drunken amusement at the near impossibility of anyone mounting Dean anyway in such an awkward position to care whether anyone actually tried to do it, Dean was sufficiently protected from the reactions in his Flores to finally concentrate on clambering out of the pit inside his own mind.

By the time the Alphas had given up on trying to mount him on the chair and had unstrapped him, thrown him down on the back of a couch so he was folded at the waist with his head spilling down and ass at a good position for entry, Dean was half way up the cliff edge, climbing steadily, teeth clenched in concentration, determined to reach the top and refusing to be distracted from that goal even as the first cock breached him.

And even as one Alpha followed the next, as Dean's ass wrested out one agonised orgasm after another from each of his rapists, still Dean kept climbing inside his own head until, suddenly, with a loud audible howl of triumph, Dean finally broke through into the blue.

And even then, as though the devil's own luck followed Azazel, it was at the moment that Gordon Walker (who had spent hours wheedling with Sam for permission and had only finally obtained Sam's inebriated agreement with the offer of his Rolex, which was now sitting on Sam's wrist) plunged into Dean's ass that the Omegá came fully, totally and absolutely to his senses.

There was, admittedly, a moment of heart-stopping confusion, followed by horror, humiliation and fury as memories of not only the last few hours but last several weeks flooded into Dean like a tsunami of sickening images. There was even a moment when the cloud of pheromones from the amulet sent a waft of soothing suggestion that simple compliance was the most preferable response to the current scenario.

And, for a instant, Dean, soothed by the scent of his one true mate, briefly considered its suggestion to simply go with the flow and enjoy the admittedly pleasurable sensation of his nicely filled ass.

And then, with a snarled audible "Fuck THAT!", Dean Winchester reached up, grasped the amulet around his neck, wrenched it off so violently that its chain cut his neck as it snapped, and threw the damned piece of shit clear across the room.

He took another breath, prepared to violently expel Gordon from his body and then, instead made the decision that it was not enough, not nearly enough to soothe even a fraction of the insult to himself.

So instead he clamped down, imagining the ice pegs, visualising himself crushing them into splintered slushies. He crushed and he splintered and he squeezed, uncaring of Gordon's agonised high pitched screams or of Gordon's fists pummelling his buttocks and hips as he desperately tried to escape.

And not satisfied to simply mangle and crush Gordon's cock so badly that a medical amputation would at that point probably have been inevitable anyway, Dean slammed his external sphincter closed and literally severed through the flesh entirely.

Gordon staged backwards from the couch, blood gushing from the gaping hole in his crotch in an arterial spray that painted the room not unlike the way Mary's blood had fled her body, and despite the way Gordon's hands were pressing desperately against his wound to stem the flow, his movements were too clumsy and his blood too thinned by alcohol to even attempt to clot itself.

Tellingly, perhaps, Azazel did nothing to help him. The Beta made no attempt to enter the room through the confused milling bodies of blood-drenched Alphas whose drunken fumbling was proving no help to their fallen 'friend'.

Neither did he make any move to step in the way of Dean who calmly ejected Gordon's severed cock, then stood up, cast a disgusted look at his own brother and then, with the poise and grace of an offended cat, merely walked past the Alphas, out of the room and past Azazel without acknowledgement, before ascending the stairs to his bedroom and pointedly slamming the door shut behind him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Azazel contrives a situation in which both Sam and Dean lose their virginity together. I personally consider this scene to be rape of both characters though you may see it differently.  
> Azazel then convinces Sam to do something unforgivably, cruel and awful to his brother at his party. It proves however to be Dean's salvation and although he's going to be majorly pissed with Sam, he will be able to see the bigger picture....eventually. Ask me sometime about my feelings about the absolutely necessary role of Judas in the Jesus story and you'd probably be surprised by my answer.  
> But essentially, Dean ends up as a party favour, is introduced to more Alpha cocks and kills Gordon Walker.  
> IF you want to know HOW he does it, read the actual story ;>)


	74. Chapter Seventy

Azazel couldn't believe his luck.

Dean had solved one of his most burning issues purely by accident and it didn't matter one hoot that a couple of the school board were muttering darkly about removing his license to teach because he'd been lax enough not to notice an Alpha had somehow slipped alcohol into the innocent 'fruit punch' he'd provided for the party.

By the time the authorities arrived, the room was filled with Alpha calming pheremones, the Omegá chair was back in the basement, the empty cooler was in the pantry, the punch bowl was on the table and a couple of empty alcohol bottles were secreted in Gordon's belongings. None of the Alphas mentioned the 'drinking game' to the cops, obviously, and were perfectly happy to go along with Azazel's suggestion that they should claim to have been unaware that Gordon had spiked the punch. Terrified by Gordon's death, scared of any consequences to themselves, all the teenage Alphas had reverted to a childlike trust in their teacher to 'make things better' for them. 

As Azazel anticipated, not one of the attending police even suggested the idea of interviewing Dean. That, in Beta eyes, would have been akin to demanding to interview a dog to ask why it had bitten someone.

It had been quickly and easily established, and collabarated by all the shell-shocked teens, that totally inebriated by his own illicit alcohol, Gordon Walker had entered a state of rut rage, had attacked and mounted Dean without warning and, because of his intoxication, had panicked when Dean's body performed its perfectly normal action of clamping down on an invader. Gordon, having never mounted an Omega before and clearly not in his right mind, had attempted to escape and had pulled backwards with such Alpha strength that he had ripped his own penis off in the process.

And the cops had shrugged their acceptance of the described event and had nodded their agreement of how it seemed a perfectly plausible explanation.

So Azazel was pretty confident he was free and clear.

For one thing, most of the school board were perfectly happy to accept Azazel's claim of innocence. Boys would be boys, after all, and everyone knew that trying to control the behaviour of teen Alphas was like herding cats. Most of the school board accepted that Azazel's only error of judgement was in failing to anticipate the inevitability of a group of Alphas acting like barely civilised animals in the first place. The general consensus was that Azazel had been naive rather than negligent and Gordon Walker had clearly been the author of his own misfortune.

After all, there wasn't a single person in Sioux Falls who didn't have at least one close relative employed by WalCo.

But even if the couple of dissenters from popular opinion could make the charges fly, which was unlikely, it wasn't as though Azazel planned to hang around much longer anyway now he had, almost inadvertently, created pretty much the situation he'd always intended in a far shorter timescale than he'd ever dreamed possible.

He'd had an entire sub plot ready to roll wherein Sam would have deliberately been encouraged to lure Gordon into a position where the attempted (or actual) rape of the Omegá in a distinctly non rut rage scenario would have enabled the Beta authorities to come down on Gordon's head like an anvil as long as Sam was prepared to press charges against him. Azazel had even planned for a specifically grim scenario that would have resulted in a sentence demanding Gordon's punitive castration and, presumably, the decision of the young Alpha to choose euthanasia instead. Gordon Walker had never struck Azazel as that rare breed of Alpha that would accept emasculation over a bullet.

Dean had, somehow, instinctively cut the situation to the chase by executing Gordon himself under circumstances that the Beta authorities would accept without question but the Packs would undoubtedly know was highly suspect.

Perhaps surprisingly, Azazel was actually relieved to avoid having to engineer Gordon's downfall himself. Although he'd never refused to do whatever needed to be done, he'd never felt entirely comfortable with the idea of harming an Omegá at all. He was genuinely relieved that portion of his machinations was almost over. It was just a shame that Dean had obviously realised the purpose of the amulet.

He was so pleased with Dean otherwise that he'd completely forgotten his previous irritation with the Omegá so was able to view the situation with more generosity of spirit. He now was glad, after all, that Dean would at least be spared the trauma of another violent rape by Gordon.

Azazel was not in any doubt that Dean had somehow done it on purpose. Accepting that as a fact, despite his inability to comprehend how Dean had actually achieved it, obviously threw the prior 'accident' with Becky Rosen in a fresh light too. Azazel was suddenly pretty sure that the generally accepted idea an Omegá had no control over their own Flores was either a fallacy or a big fat lie. But he had no interest in proving it. 

In fact, casting any light of suspicion on Dean himself would be totally counterproductive.

It was important that Dean's Flores was later perceived by everyone as merely a dumb tool that had been cleverly used by external agency to effect a deliberate execution. 

The 'gun' might have been Dean's, but it was important that no one ever believed that Dean himself had pulled the trigger.

It was critical that when the Packs finally caught on to the existence of the experimental drugs that every finger pointed clearly towards the Beta Government as the perpetrators. How better to achieve that than with the drugs somehow causing the 'accidental' death of the one young Alpha that just about every Free Beta in South Dakota wanted dead?

Sadly for the young Alpha, who had been an obnoxious little bastard admittedly, his death by one method or another had been preordained since the moment he'd presented. No member of WalCo's board would ever have stood idly by and allowed Gordon simply to take over.

In killing Gordon, Dean had saved WalCo from possibly falling into Pack control. But that was incidental. He'd definitely saved it from being asset stripped and run into the ground by Gordon's greedy mismanagement. Thousands of people who had been fearing for their jobs would be sleeping much better already because of what had just happened. 

The fortuitous nature of Gordon Walker's premature expiration was of such obvious and immediate benefit to so many Free Betas that even had Gordon committed suicide in a public place, witnessed by thousands, the conspiracy theorists would still have had a hay day over the convenience of his demise.

And who was more likely to be the suspect body behind the conspiracy if not the Central Beta Government itself?

So Azazel had always intended for Gordon to die. It was the sole reason why he'd never allowed him to become one of the Specs. He had never wanted the 'Pack' to embrace Gordon as one of their own because he had envisaged needing to use the Specs to entrap Gordon into the required situation to achieve his sucessful prosecution and sentencing.

He'd never, obviously, anticipated that Dean would take matters into his own hands and achieve the desired result so quickly. The unexpected rapidity would even have been potentially a problem had Azazel not already met several times with Michael Walker to negotiate the terms of the 'reward' that should be offered to Sam to gain his cooperation in the intended sting. As it was, he would simply tell Michael that an opportunity had arisen unexpectedly early and that Sam had simply made clever use of it to uphold 'his' end of the deal. Michael would pay over the negotiated fee, it would be banked in Sam's name and no one would ever believe the young Alpha's protestations of innocence. 

Though it didn't matter if they did, really, since this aspect of the plan wasn't specifially a trap for Sam but simply the planting of clear evidence of Government collusion.

Even under Primá compulsion, when the events of that evening were finally subject to a Pack Trial, Michael Walker would honestly state it was his firm belief he had entered into a private deal with a government agent to utilise a government developed drug to manipulate Sam Winchester into killing Gordon in exchange for enough money to attend University.

Obviously, by the time the American Packs finally became aware of the drug, Azazel would have disappeared back over the border and would be safely ensconced back in Lucifer's Pack land and it would be assumed by all he'd simply gone to ground within whatever secret place fugitive Beta Government black hats lurked.

Events moving so much quicker than he'd expected (though admittedly the timescale had been necessarily stepped up anyway by his own mistake at Shab-e Yalda) probably meant that his own plans to leave needed to be brought forward too.

But he still had some time to put a few more ducks in a row before his departure couldn't be put off any longer.

As soon as the police had vacated the house and Gordon's body had been carted off for disposal, the Alpha teens had scattered back to their own homes and Sam had staggered off to bed to sleep off his drunken confusion. Azazel had then heard Dean emerge from his bedroom. He had stayed out of his way, content to just listen at a distance, knowing that at least as long as he could hear the Omegá banging around downstairs in evident fury, Dean wasn't simply fleeing the house in offended rage or fearful panic.

Banging had soon been a truly accurate discription as, after rummaging around in the garage for a while, Dean had returned to his room and fixed several internal deadbolts both to his own bedroom door and Sam's side of their jack and jill shared bathroom. From investigating what had gone missing from the garage, Azazel was pretty sure Dean had also fixed internal metal bars to prevent the doors simply being burst off their hinges by the strength of an enraged Alpha.

At that point, feeling pretty mellow overall, Azazel had been more amused by Dean's defiant determination to protect himself than irritated by it.

He was further amused when, a while later, after Dean had finally finished his fortifications and shut himself away, Azazel discovered that several pegs were missing from the basement and a supply of food and drinks had been taken from the kitchen. It was quite obvious that Dean was intending to lick his wounds in private for some considerable time. He had a bedroom, a bathroom, food, drinks, pegs and a computer. Dean probably wouldn't need to emerge for a week or more.

Which worked out nicely for Azazel since he needed to do a little damage limitation with Sam before the brothers ever confronted one another. Azazel needed to ensure that Dean never mentioned why he'd torn the amulet from his throat.

Sam had, as expected, spent the subsequent few days (after finally throwing off his hangover) alternating wildly between breast-beating regret and door-beating rage.

He literally spent hours sitting on the floor outside Dean's bedroom, apologising profusely for the events of his party and begging for Dean to open the door and talk to him face to face.

His plaintive sniffles and self pitying sobs might have eventually borne fruit if they hadn't periodically been interspersed by flashes of Alpha rage wherein Sam would leap to his feet and hammer so violently at the door, roaring with fury at being denied access to HIS Omegá, that it rattled in its frame. The fact he failed continually to gain admittance supported Azazel's suspicions that Dean had indeed reinforced the door with the missing metal door bars.

Sam didn't break his vigil for three days and, even then, it wasn't so much a case of him giving in as being forced into a temporary retreat by the arrival of an unexpectedly vicious and determined red headed fury by the name of Charlie Bradbury.

It had been almost comedic to see such a tiny, slim girl lay into a big buff Alpha the way Charlie assaulted Sam the moment Azazel had responded to her angry hammering on the front door and allowed her into the house.

Charlie had flown past him with little more than a snarled curse and though she was yelling "Where is he, you bastard?" she didn't wait for a reply but simply raced for the staircase in the reasonable, and correct, assumption that the brothers would be found on the second floor. 

Azazel followed her up the stairs at a slightly more sedate pace. He was reasonably certain there were sufficient Alpha calming chemicals infusing the house to prevent Sam reacting in 'rage', particularly since Charlie was not a rival Alpha. But since a second fatal 'accident' in his house in a single week would probably be regarded as excessive carelessness on his part by the authorities, Azazel felt it best to make sure.

Sam though, reacted to Charlie's fury by crumbling completely. He backed rapidly away from the tiny fists pummelling his chest and the vitriol spitting from her lips and after only a few minutes of spluttering resistance simply turned tail, ran to his own bedroom and slammed the door in her face.

Despite Sam not having a lock on his door, Charlie made no attempt to follow him inside. Seemingly satisfied by Sam's retreat, Charlie walked back down to the hall in Azazel's direction and pointed at the door Sam had been sitting outside on her arrival. 

"Is Dean in there?" she demanded.

Azazel nodded his agreement.

"Then you can piss off too," she snarled rudely.

Azazel had just shrugged and complied, returning down the stairs and although he hadn't witnessed her gain entry or even heard the unbolting of Dean's door, that had been two days ago and, to the best of his knowledge, Charlie Bradbury had not yet left his house so he was safely assuming that she was locked in Dean's room with him and, from the constant blue lights flashing on his router, the pair seemed to be making good use of his broadband capacity.

Whilst he was intrigued by what they might be up to, he wasn't particularly worried. He had a state of the art filter on his fireguard, preventing access to anything more dangerous than google. Besides, what could a couple of ill-educated young pups truly hope to achieve on a computer anyway?

And at least her constant presence in Dean's room had proved an effective deterrent to Sam's noisy assaults on Dean's door.

Of course, the downside of that was that Sam had turned his attention to Azazel's part in what had happened on his birthday. But that was fine. It wasn't as though Azazel hadn't prepared for that particular conversation. And it was best done sooner than later.

"He's your Omegá, Sam. Don't blame me for your poor decisions. Nobody 'made' you agree to anything that happened. I see you're still wearing that particularly nice watch. If you really regretted what happened, I would have thought you would have thrown it in the garbage."

"It's a Rolex," Sam muttered sulkily. "Anyway, the drinks were your idea."

"I foolishly believed you were all responsible enough to limit your intake. You can't constantly insist you should be treated as an adult and then complain that I trusted you to behave like one. Anyway, what harm was done, really? It's not as though any of you actually liked Gordon Walker, is it?"

"I don't give a damn about Gordon," Sam snarled. "You let them all fuck my Omegá."

"No, Sam. YOU let them do it and since, as you continually remind me, he is YOUR Omegá, it was not my place to interfere."

"But he hates me now," Sam complained. "He won't even talk to me."

"Well, I admit that is rather peculiar," Azazel commiserated. "After all he clearly enjoyed it immensely when he was mounted by you earlier and it's completely unheard of for an Omegá to object to being mounted at all. Maybe... we'll, I hesitate to suggest this, Sam, but have you considered the possibility that Dean is medically unwell, rather than just a bit screwed up by the way your mother raised him?"

"What do you mean?" Sam demanded.

"Well, I didn't want to tell you this in case you got the wrong idea but, well, something similar happened in the hospital. Obviously it wasn't a sexual thing. No-one would have ever touched Dean like that without your permission. But obviously one of the doctors touched him 'there' when doing an examination before the docking procedure. Just a medical check, of course, and...well... she touched his Flores and he...um..."

"What?" Sam snarled, his teeth flashing like knives.

"Dean accidentally did to her hand what he did to Gordon's penis. He pulled it inside himself and then severed it." 

"Oh, shit," Sam said, his face twisting in disgust.

"Yes," Azazel agreed, with a solemn nod. "And you have to ask yourself, if that's a natural thing to happen, how anyone ever touches an Omegá at all? So, as much as I hate to say it, I think there's something wrong with Dean. Some kind of medical defect. And I suspect that's why he's shut himself away. I don't think he's mad at you at all, Sam. I think he's just scared and embarrassed. He's probably just pretending to be angry to protect you. You know how much Dean loves you, Sam. I can't even begin to imagine how awful he must be feeling to finally understand how much he wants his Alpha's touch but be too scared of his own body to let you anywhere near him."

Sam grasped eagerly onto the idea, finding it far more palatable to digest than his own guilt.

"He's scared of hurting me? Like he hurt Gordon?"

"And the Doctor," Azazel reminded him.

"So you're saying he's... defective?" Sam questioned cautiously.

"I think there's something a little wrong with his Flores," Azazel agreed. "But I am sure it's just a gynaecological thing. Something that could easily be fixed. In fact, I don't mean to be personal but, well, did you find him to be a little, well, a little uncomfortably tight?"

Sam flushed and avoided his eyes. "It was a bit intense," he admitted. "It hurt quite a bit."

"Ah," Azazel nodded. "That explains it. Poor Dean."

"What are you saying? I thought...well, my Sire said all Omegáres are tight like that."

"Well yes and no," Azazel said. "They certainly close and hold a penis tightly inside themselves but not so much that it should actually hurt an Alpha. So that confirms what I suspected. Perhaps it's got something to do with how big and muscular he is anyway. Perhaps that's why the muscles of his Flores have over-developed."

"So you're saying his Flores is too muscular? That's the problem?" Sam frowned. 

"I'm sure it is and if that's the issue it can easily be fixed.He just needs a tiny little operation that will relax his Flores a little. Stop it being so tight. I believe the procedure is so minor he doesn't even need an overnight stay. It's just a little operation done under local anaesthetic."

"And that will put him right? Stop him worrying about hurting me? Make him stop avoiding me?" Sam asked eagerly.

"I guarantee it," Azazel beamed. "Just a quick little cut and he'll be back in the basement begging you to be his Alpha once more."

"And it won't hurt his Flores? It being cut, I mean?"

Azazel laughed gently. "No one will even touch his Flores, Sam. This is a minor hormonal issue. Probably due to an overactive thyroid. All Dean needs is a little keyhole surgery on his throat."


	75. Chapter Seventy One

Dean was so red eyed with exhaustion by the time he undid the bolts and allowed Charlie into his room that, except for greeting him with an effusive hug and squeal of relieved excitement, the first thing Charlie did was insist he went straight to bed. She was so concerned by his dead-eyed stare she seemed barely cognisant that he'd regained his senses.

Then again, he was so tired at that point he doubted he'd manage to string more than two words together if he tried.

"Get some rest. I'll stay here. I'll keep you safe," she promised, so sincerely that he believed the tiny redhead was actually capable of keeping her promise and so he simply staggered to his bed on legs so tired they could barely hold his weight.

Even the night of the party, sure he'd secured the room, positive Sam would be too drunk to even attempt ingress, Dean had struggled not to wake with every creak and groan of the old house as it settled through the night. And for the subsequent three days, as Sam had kept his constant vigil outside his door, snatching more than a few minutes rest at a time had been impossible.

His muscles ached like over tightened guitar strings, so taut with trembling tension that it had felt at times like they might actually rip under the seemingly permanent shakes that had rippled through his body for days.

Had anyone witnessed him sitting on the floor in the corner furthest from the door, his knees wrapped around his knees in a hug less of self-comfort than a desperate effort to stop himself from shaking apart, they might understandably have thought he was cowering in terror of Sam's ceaseless assaults of plaintive words interspersed by periods of snarling, fist-banging fury.

But they would have been wrong.

Dean hadn't been trembling in fear. Neither had he been holding himself in an attempt at self comfort.

He had spent three days shaking in fury. And the reason he had curled in a ball and wrapped his arms around his knees was literally to prevent himself from being stupid enough in that fury to unbolt the door and attempt to punch Sam in the face.

Dean hadn't even stopped himself from doing it to protect Sam. He'd simply been smart enough to understand the danger posed to himself by actually acting out his urge.

But, oddly, it had been Sam's sad apologies that had driven him to a near incandescent rage. Sam's pitiful, self-indulgent, self-absorbed, muttering of ' _Sam's_ ' misery that had infuriated him because in every word of apology had been an underlying, unmistakable suggestion that somehow poor, misunderstood _Sam_ was the true victim of the situation.

It was, peculiarly, the moments when Sam's Alpha broke through and howled at the door like a crazed wolf that Dean's armour of righteous anger was dented. It was when the Alpha lurking under Sam's skin broke cover and revealed itself in all its growling need that Dean found a measure of compassion and reluctant understanding for his brother.

Those moments, those undeniably most dangerous moments were, peculiarly, the times it was hardest to resist the urge to open the door.

And he honestly wasn't sure whether his resistance would have lasted much longer, worn and ground down by the constant needful demands of his brother and the exhaustion dragging on his limbs like leaden weights.

But he'd never know whether he might have eventually crumbled because, like a tiny red-haired knight, Charlie had come charging to his rescue.

So Dean slept, too tired even to dream, fortunately, and Charlie kept watch, spending the long hours of her vigil buried deeply in a program she had brought on a USB stick to load onto Dean's computer (though on the other side of the split screen she held a series of steady, quiet Skype conversations with various members of the Losers as they kept her updated with all the latest results of their own research.

By the time her program sounded an alert that she finally had collected what she needed to proceed, the file she had originally meant to resend was several documents larger and its conclusions were a great deal more far reaching.

And so it was several hours later, nearly mid morning, when her online mailbox pinged an alert of incoming mail and it was her squeal of excitement as she opened it that finally woke Dean from his long, much needed sleep.

"You look better, Bestie," she said, offering him a sweet but hesitant smile.

"I feel like roadkill," he muttered grumpily, rubbing at his eyes that felt sore and dry.

"You really are better," she squeed, bouncing like an excited puppy. "I mean, I figured if you could lock the door and everything then you had to be better, but then you looked like shit...I mean really...um...tired, I mean, not shit, obviously, just kind of tired but then you didn't talk and so then I thought...well, I mean...well, wow, you're YOU again. I...I'd....well, I started to think you'd never talk to me again."

Dean thought about it, then shook his head in negation. "No you hadn't," he replied quietly."You never gave up, Charlie. I remember. I remember everything. You were always there. Every morning. You never gave up on me."

Charlie raced across the room and threw herself on him in an ungainly hug , so they were both sprawled on the bed together and she burst into tears; big ugly sobs of relief that were, somehow, the most lovely sight Dean had ever seen. As she sniffled and cried, dripping tears and even snot into his chest, he patted her back gently and found himself smiling despite being sure just three days earlier that he would never be capable of smiling again.

"You're okay? You're really okay?" She demanded, pulling back enough to stare at his face doubtfully.

"I'm better," he assured her. "Pissed as fuck, but better."

"Good," she said, "'Cos I'm about to blow your mind, now you've got a mind to be blown."

"Good to know," Dean said, dryly.

Charlie grinned.

"I've made contact with a Pack Lawyer. Well, actually he's kind of _the_ Pack lawyer. The _King_ lawyer. And I've been trying for days. You won't believe how hard it's been. Kevin and I put this file together and we tried to get it to Cain Crowley a week ago but, well it didn't work and...no...hang on, let me start at the beginning..."

By the time Charlie had caught Dean up to date with what the Losers had been doing up until Sam's birthday, and Dean was reading through the file she'd prepared, they were both sitting cross-legged on the bed having a mattress picnic out of some of the food Dean had liberated from Azazel's kitchen on the night of the party.

“I had the idea of hacking into an individual computer and leaving the file in a folder in the middle of the desktop screen. Only problem was I should have thought it through better. The only person I found in the firm who had an unprotected laptop I could actually break into was some sleaze who’d deliberately removed the firm’s mobile device protection so he could use his computer for some inappropriate home use, if you know what I mean.  I couldn't get into it when it was connected to his work network, but it was easy to access it through his home router. But I should have guessed someone like that hardly spends his workday productively either.  After nothing happened at all for a few days, I hacked him again in the evening and checked his file history and the stupid, lazy bastard hadn’t even noticed the folder I’d put smack in the middle of his desktop because it hadn’t even been opened.

“So I thought about planting a virus that activated when he connected to his work network. I figured Cain-Crowley’s IT guys would soon track the infection back to the laptop and, presumably, find the file themselves. But then I worried the sleazy bastard might just burn the whole device if he figured it had an infection, considering the amount of porny filth that was sitting on its hard drive to be discovered.  He’s clearly an Alpha, ‘cos no Beta has enough of a sex drive to need that much stimulation material. Urggh. You don’t want to know the details, trust me. But, anyway, I then figured out the best way to do it was a keylogging Trojan.

“So I knocked up a quick site of the kind of images he was after, which was double-ewww ‘cos I had to go hunt down the pics for the site from other porny sites, but then I buried the Trojan on my site, sent him a link, and voila the sucker fell straight into the trap! It was like poetry in motion.  So then it took a couple more days for the Trojan to activate itself and of course I had to keep monitoring it, waiting for him to log on at work, but when he finally did, I had it. His official Cain-Crowley log in credentials and password for the network. You still with me?”

Dean nodded firmly. He was, admittedly, not sure of the jargon she was using but had grasped the fundamental point of her long-winded explanation.

“Right,” she said. “So, once I could log-in all legit, I had a chance to poke around and check out the addies of the other users and I finally figured the direct email account of the actual Crowley of Cain-Crowley, 'cos I decided to stop messing about with minions, and so I sent the whole kit and caboodle straight to him from the Sleaze’s work email account, from inside their local network, so there was no way for the government to intercept it.

“And I gave Crowley a hopefully untraceable webmail account to contact me on, to confirm he's taking it seriously, and then I crossed my fingers and waited and, guess what?  He emailed me this morning. His email's all stiff and legal and a bit cold, to be honest, but I guess that’s just an assholey lawyer thing. he's definitely interested though because he's asked  me a ton of questions to verify the stuff I send him and I realise I don't know half the answers but I thought maybe we could try and reply to him together. I think you probably know a lot of the answers to the stuff I don't know yet. Particularly about the crap that went on in the hospital, ‘cos I don’t really know much except the bullshit rumors.”

“What rumors?” Dean demanded urgently.

Charlie flushed and shuffled awkwardly. “I know it’s probably all crap,” she mumbled.

“Just tell me what they’re saying. Please.”

“Well, it’s just all more of the Black Widow shit, you know?”

Dean blinked at her in confusion.

“The thing with that asshole Gordon, you know? John Henson’s mom works at Sioux Fall’s General and she said you’d done it to half-a-dozen people there too. Killed 'em with your cunt, I mean. Which is a totally bassass idea but obviously a load of bullshit. But everyone’s buying it and calling you the Black Widow Omegá and saying how none of the Packs will want to buy you in case you do it to a Primá next. But I told ‘em they were talking shit, because it’s not like six people could have just dropped dead at the hospital and it not get into the papers anyway.  And then Kevin broke into the hospital records and proved there only one member of staff who left whilst you were there and that should have shut the rumor down but, of course, everyone just said they probably shipped Alphas in especially and no one would miss an Alpha or six dropping off the planet, so…well… I guess most folk still think it’s true.

“Still, on the bright side I can’t see any of the Sioux Falls Alphas ever sniffing around you again. All it takes these days is a mention of your name and they all go white and clutch their cocks protectively. It’s kind of funny, really, if you think about it, though, um, I don’t guess you see it as funny at all, so, um, well, that’s it, really.”

Dean frowned at her thoughtfully, then quirked a small smile. “It’s a little funny,” he admitted.

Charlie grinned with relief.

"So are you onboard with the lawyer thing? I mean, obviously we were trying to stop anything happening to you and we fucked it up and you got hurt and maybe it's too late now, but I kind of think you're probably in a shit-load of danger still so I get what you said about not wanting to leave Sam but... well, maybe you ought to at least consider talking to this Crowley anyway 'cos if nothing else he might be able to get hold of Daniel for you, or well..."

"I'll talk to the lawyer," he interrupted. "But I don't know whether you're right about this drug, thing, Charlie.  I know Azazel's been drugging _me_ , and it's the only thing that makes any sense whatsoever of Sam’s behaviour so I guess I _want_ it to be true. But, well, the thing is, I really don’t understand why any drug created to control Alpha libidos has the totally opposite effect on an Omega.”

Charlie listened in growing horror as he explained the amulet to her and its effects.

“And Sam gave it to you?”

“Yeah, but like I said, he filled it with Azazel’s drug which is apparently based on Primá pheromones. Apparently, sniffing the scent is supposed to prevent rut rage but, honestly, the only thing I know for certain is its effect on me.”

“Well, maybe, that makes perfect sense if it’s based on Primá emissions. As far as I know, Primáres use their pheromones to control all the pack members. Maybe that means they don’t have rut rage at all in the packs because the Primáres can control the teenage Alphas just by their presence. But, obviously, an Omegá  has a totally different response to a Primá.”

“Great. So Primá  pheromones get Alphas to close their legs and Omegáres to open them? Doesn’t seem much of an improvement to me,” Dean complained. “I thought it was better for Omegáres in Pack Land. Daniel told me it would be ‘my’ choice whether I mated or not. He didn’t bother to mention I’d take one sniff of a Primá and offer him my cunt on a plate!”

 “Maybe it’s just the way the actual drug works. Maybe it just really intensifies stuff. It makes sense, if you think about it. Turning gaseous particles into a concentrated liquid form has to have changed their properties a lot. At the very least, you must have received one hell of an overdose," Charlie pointed out.

“I just think it’s a weird thing for the Beta Government to spend time and resources on,” Dean said. “This had to have been in development long before the Detroit conclave.  I know you’ve only traced evidence of them using it on Alphas since then, which I guess makes sense as it’s only since the rut houses closed that Alphas have been stopped moving into the big cities, but how on earth did they have the idea ready to roll out for testing so quickly? They must have been sitting on the plan already but, to be honest, I would have thought they’d look for a more…permanent… solution to the Alpha problem.”

“From what me and the gang have uncovered, I think they did,” Charlie admitted regretfully. “I think general consensus in central government is that the ideal solution would be to find a way of preventing the genetic 'flaws' that create Alphas and Omegáres in the first place. We’ve found evidence there was a government programme back in the 70's when pregnant Betas were given amniocentesis to check for Alpha and Omegá genes in their foetuses.  They never got as far as finding an Omegá in vitro because you’re all so rare but a few Alpha foetuses were identified. The doctors attempted to perform abortions but something in the nature of Alphas resisted the procedures and the mothers all died during the procedure along with their pups.

"So the programme was cancelled and because it was decided it would be immoral and illegal to wait for the Alphas to be born and then euthanise them, it was decided that Alphas were a necessary 'evil’ that everyone would just have to live with until they could identify the errant gene in Betas that occasionally produces them. Until then, the government decided it was wisest to revert to the tenet of the original Omegá Tablet. Since scripture said that Omegáres were created to 'control' Alphas, the government decided the text meant that the proclivities of young Alphas were supposed to be controlled by the providing of Omegáres to satisfy them during their teenage rutting. So that's how the rut houses started.

“But a couple of years ago, there was some talk in the Senate of testing for Omegá genes at birth and removing the pups from their parents to be brought up in government facilities instead of living in the general population and Alphas would visit them for supervised mountings. The idea was to apparently do away with the need for Alpha guardians entirely and thus ensure social stability and we lucky Betas would finally have had all the power we apparently crave.

“Only the plan was put on ice after the Detroit conclave. But it hasn’t gone away entirely and the government are still pressing ahead with passing some new laws saying that Omegáres won’t be old enough to be sold to packs until they reach 21. The law is a beast that evolves. There’s already talk of saying the Primáres won't be able to buy an Omegá at all. But since no one is going to risk war, there are some other ideas such as sterilising Omegáres before handing them over. And, then well, no more Primáres get born and the problem ends forever. It's a long term plan of ethnic cleansing, Dean.”

“According to some of the emails we’ve intercepted between the Governor of Texas and an Ablest called Dick Roman, there are quite a few Betas out there who really don’t want to live in a world where however much they achieve there will always be someone out there, richer, more successful and more powerful than them just because their dick can pop a knot.

“Dick Roman says the world will be better for everyone without Primáres. He isn’t actually proposing killing them. He says the government should leave them alone to play their power games unhindered. They can pop their knots in their Omegáres to their hearts content. They just won't be able to sire pups. Eventually they'll die of old age and the Packs will be relegated to history where, according to Roman, ‘they belong’."


	76. Chapter Seventy Two

It is highly probable that the euphoric response of the average citizen of Sioux Falls to the death of Gordon Walker was the primary reason the leader of the City Council was lynched, somewhat ironically, from the bough of a tree in Falls Park.

When the rumour inevitably eventually leaked that the Packs had served an eviction notice on the entire City, the terrible implications were so distressing that the rather macabre celebrants of the young Alpha's death were immediately plummeted from ecstatic happiness at having their jobs saved to an equally but opposite amount of despair at having their homes threatened. The resultant bi-polar reaction caused a small riot in City Hall, the beating of several councillors and the aforementioned vigilante execution.

This did, however, at least firmly focus the remaining City Councillors on resolving their dispute with the Packs with renewed vigour.

After a few days of frantic meetings, a settlement proposal was reached that they were sure would meet with Pack approval and several City Lawyers were quickly despatched to Detroit to put the proposal to Castiel Cainson (since Cain-Crowley made the point the Grandé Alpha Primá was far too busy to return to Sioux Falls to discuss the issue there. The Packs knew they had the City on the back foot and were determined to keep the advantage).

Cain-Crowley did, at least, provide a limousine at the airport to collect the Lawyers and that seemed like a gesture of good will to the Betas until the driver drove them not to the towering black edifice of the Cain-Crowley office building but outside of the city limits entirely and over a border into the Pack Land where Castiel's notorious Pack Hall was located.

Since the last time Free Betas had visited Castiel's Pack Hall was the occasion of the Conclave, the lawyers were understandably somewhat distressed and fearful to note their intended destination. Whilst they couldn't imagine how their personal demises might be justified, they weren't certain the Packs felt the same way and they were consequently sure the chosen location of the meeting boded nothing good.

And, as they were led into the Pack Hall for the meeting with the Primá , it should be noted that the floor of the main hall had, indeed, been drawn back to reveal the entrance to the dungeons and the pit in which the much rotted remains of those tried at the Conclave were still somewhat pungently evident.

It should probably also be noted for clarity that the floor sealed with air-tight efficiency and so, normally, the Pack suffered no odiferous evidence of any bodies decaying beneath their feet, and, anyway, after so much time passing the bodies had reached the advanced stage of dry decay where, despite a fair amount of skin still being evident, it was primarily white, bleached bones that were more prominent than flesh now on the desiccated corpses.

Yet on this occasion, with the floor wide open, even the sweet smell of burning incense around the room barely concealed the distinct stench of rotting meat. So it might be fair to assume that the smell had been artificially added to the room, specifically to add to the atmosphere.

That comforting thought did not, however, cross the minds of the lawyers.

Consequently it was impossible for them to even attempt to keep their eyes away from the horrific contents of the pit, even though they were obviously even more desperate to show complete and proper deference to the Primá they were addressing. Their attempt to concentrate on Castiel was further challenged by the presence of his Beta Wife, Meg, who was sitting to the side of the large hall, taking no part in the proceedings, but simply playing fetch with her 'puppy'.

Two of the lawyers, already struggling from the sight and stench of the pit, completely lost the contents of their stomachs when faced with the vision of the creature scampering around the hall obediently retreiving the ball Meg was tossing for it with a serene smile on her own countenance.

Castiel apparently didn't even notice them throwing up because he simply continued the meeting without pause.

"Why would I possibly agree to this?" he asked, sneering at the paperwork they had handed to him via a stone-faced Alpha.

"Our clients obviously aren't asking the Packs to actually change their mind about the escheat of the original mesne-fief," the Primary counsel, the same lawyer who had met with Castiel previously, hurriedly explained. "The City Council is simply looking to negotiate a new fief with the Pack. A shorthold tenancy agreement, if you will. Clearly with its own, new, agreed terms of tenancy."

"99 years is not 'short' by any definition," Castiel countered.

"Tithe terms are to be renegotiable in favor of the Pack at 25, 50 and 75 years," the lawyer pointed out, "because we appreciate the effects of inflation on any tithe fee set today. But, essentially, the City is offering to double its tithe immediately and implement the other promised changes. For the period of the tenancy, the City will hand over any Omegá born or living within the City limits on their sixteenth birthday, regardless of any national law being passed to gift them the right to hold the Omegá for longer. As a mark of good faith, the one Omegá currently residing in the City will immediately be sold to the Packs for the nominal fee of $1."

"Which will, effectively, make him the most expensive Omegá in the history of the planet," Castiel pointed out dryly, "Since his bride price of $1 will also incorporate exactly how many billions the City will save in not being forced to evacuate?"

"Several," the lawyer agreed honestly, "but we both know there's no real benefit to the Pack in going through with the eviction process. Since all land is Pack owned, you'd only be moving over a million people from one piece of Pack owned land to another anyway. And though I'm sure the packs would gain some not inconsiderable satisfaction from rendering those people homeless, there's little other advantage to taking a stable workforce and turning them into homeless refugees."

"You underestimate the amount of satisfaction the Packs would experience by the process. Vengeance is a highly valued commodity within Pack society," Castiel stated, looking pointedly in the direction of his wife, who was still playing with her 'pet'. "Besides," he continued, "the majority of Sioux Falls residents are employed by the Beta-owned corporation, WalCo, so the Packs have little interest in whether they remain a stable workforce or not. Don't make the mistake of thinking I don't know about the very recent 'unfortunate' demise of the Alpha scion of the Walker family. The Packs require some substantial compensation in regard to their potential loss of interest in WalCo itself."

"Naturally," the lawyer agreed, offering a further piece of paper for Victor to hand to Castiel. "Thank you for reminding me that I carelessly ommitted to include this with my earlier proposal."

Castiel sneered but didn't call him directly on the attempt to hold back a portion of the deal. The Primá had no issue with the Beta being good at his job. He was sufficiently confident that he, himself, was _better_ that it seemed more an act of professional courtesy from the City authorities to have sent a somewhat competent lawyer to represent themselves. Castiel would have been far more irritated had he been forced to deal with an idiot.

He examined the offer carefully, then frowned contemplatively at the Beta.

"What makes you think this interests us?"

"Because if it didn't, you'd already have the Omegá in Pack Land. I'm not a stupid man. And I am, in fact, a family man. I have a brother also. I believe the Omegá's determination to be appointed as his younger brother's legal guardian was telling. Besides, the City only have the power to sell you the Omegá if his Alpha Guardian loses his position of authority. Whilst that could be achieved with forcible application or even an unfortunate 'accident', a charge of abandonment would work just as well and solve both problems at once."

"How do I know you have the power to offer this solution?" Castiel challenged.

"Naturally, we would be acting against what we both know to be the wishes of Central Government. However, my clients expected your suspicion of their bona fides so they have stressed they are prepared to take this step in good faith. They will ensure this is done before you sign the agreement at all. When you are satisfied it has been done, and you have confirmed the Alpha is safely in another country from which the central Beta government cannot enforce extradition, then we can do the necessary paperwork for the sale of the Omegá in partial consideration for you signing the new tenancy agreement."

"Even so, it is a very expensive bride price for an Omegá. Particularly one considered to be, what is the term people are using? Oh, yes. A 'black widow'."

The lawyer paled.

"I imagine your employers are hoping I make the mistake of dipping my own wick in that poisoned chalice," Castiel sneered.

"It may have briefly crossed their minds," the lawyer admitted, ignoring the distressed groans of his colleagues at the honest admission.

"No matter," Castiel said, smirking a little at the lawyer's boldness. "I will consider your clients offer and discuss it with Ophriel. In the meantime, we are pleased to offer you the hospitality of the Pack until the matter is settled one way or the other.

"Do I take it that particular hospitality is downstairs?" the Beta asked coolly, gesturing at the pit. "I note your dungeons are open."

"I do like dealing with intelligent men," Castiel replied smoothly. "But don't feel overly distressed by the accomodations. They are warm and dry at least. Slightly pungent, perhaps, but that's the problem with old buildings, isn't it? They are rich with the stench of history. Though I do think that kind of thing focuses ones attention on the present, don't you? Still, with a little luck, we'll have you all on a plane home soon enough."

~~

Charlie hated leaving Dean but, after several increasingly angry phone calls as the third day progressed, she was in no doubt that if she spent yet another night out of the house her aunt would probably send a police search party for her. It was weird, really since usually her Aunt Pam was far more chilled about stuff but Charlie knew everyone considered Dean 'dangerous' now. She had attempted to point out she didn't even have a dick to be detached by the 'deadly' Omegá but her Aunt didn't seem to appreciate her comment so there seemed little choice except to at least go home and show her face for a few hours before returning.

Besides, Dean assured her he had sufficient supplies to stay in the room for several more days without venturing out and endangering himself.

"Go home, get changed, calm your Auntie Pam and get some rest yourself," he urged her. "I've got more than enough to keep busy with until you come back tomorrow."

Charlie bit her lower lip in hesitation but saw the sense in what he was saying. The 'conversation' with the Cain-Crowley lawyer had been going on literally for days. As fast as they sent an answer to a question, the lawyer asked another one. And despite the information effectively flowing through a local network rather than over the internet, since Charlie had piggy-backed directly onto one of Cain-Crowley's own pc's, the lawyer was still insisting on asking his questions in peculiarly convoluted ways that suggested he was concerned about some third party intercepting their conversation. It made it impossible to simply 'talk' and Crowley point blank refused to either instant message or Skype with them.

So after a full two days, the interminable cross-examination of the situation was barely started.

"I've got this," Dean assured her. "Though god only knows what he's asking now," he groaned, as yet another crytic question arrived in the inbox. "I bet the bastard's great at crosswords."

As she descended the stairs to slip out of the front door she jumped in surprise as Sam suddenly loomed out of the shadows to confront her.

"I need to see him," he snarled, his pupils blown in red-rimmed eyes.

"Well, I think you're shit out of luck on that one," she told him with considerable satisfaction. "And if you ever want him to talk to you again, I suggest you leave him alone until HE wants to see _you._ All that pathetic banging on his door is just pissing him off more."

"He's my Omegá ," Sam insisted. "He needs me."

"He needs a brother, Sam. Not a self-centered, raping Alpha. Do you know I once actually encouraged him to stay with you? I knew he loved you and I honestly thought you loved him too," she snapped bitterly.

"I do love Dean," Sam protested, his cheeks flushing with angry offence.

"You don't even have any idea what love is. You just used him, Sam. That's not love. You pimped him to your friends for popularity and money. You used him as a party favour just to impress your stupid friends. That's goddamned abusive assholery and you know it."

"I've never taken money off anyone," Sam denied hotly.

"Ha, So you're standing there wearing your stupid $10,000 dollar watch, and you don't think that makes you a pimp?"

"Dean loves being fucked, Charlie. He's an Omegá . Getting his holes stuffed is the only thing that truly makes him happy. I admit I didn't fully buy into that idea myself at first but I saw it with my own eyes on my birthday. You should have seen the way he acted before the guys arrived. He was over me like a goddamned rash. He was so hot and horny for cock that I, well, it's as embarrassing as fuck to admit it, but I just wasn't physically capable of satisfying him by myself. That's why it happened, Charlie. Because Dean wanted it.

"Sure I benefited from Gordon's generosity, poor bastard, but where's the harm in that? Dean needed fucking anyway. He was begging for it. Flashing his Flores at everyone like some bitch in heat. And that's perfectly natural. It's how he's designed to be, and I am mature enough to accept that aspect of him and support his right to be as slutty as he wants to be. Maybe you should show him the same respect.

"So the fact I turned fulfilling his needs into a personal advantage is just a bonus, not the reason I did it. Me and Dean have never had nice things and Dean wants me to be happy, just like I want HIM to be happy, so it's a mutually beneficial arrangement, that's all. I've got to make something of my life, get to university, get a good job, get myself a future. I'd never get anything achieved if I sat around all day with Dean pleasuring himself on my cock, so if I let the other guys help him out and they help me out, everyone's happy."

Charlie's face screwed in disgust.

"You're unfucking believable Sam. Either you think I'm stupid or you've bought into your own bullshit so much you actually don't know what crap you're spouting. Dean isn't the insatiable sex-slut you're claiming. He's an Omegá . A manifestation of the Omadonna. He's a holy being, Sam, and instead of worshipping his divine nature you've perverted him for your own base desires."

Sam scoffed rudely. "It's the 21st century, Charlie. No one believes in that Omadonna nonsense any more. We aren't primitive packs believing that the waxing and waning of the moon is the result of the opening and closing of the Omadonna's flower.

"That was the real Omegá abuse, back then, when any poor bastard born as a hermaphrodite like Dean was relegated to being seen as some kind of fleshly representation of the holy Omadonna, to be forcibly bridled with a chastity belt for weeks at a time until he was so desperate for a fuck he'd let himself be raped by the whole pack on every full moon in some kind of sick orgy.

"Free Beta society is much kinder to Omegáres and it's better for everyone that we no longer have rampant horny Alphas charging around, getting violent because they haven't gotten their rocks off. The Beta laws are far better for everyone. There wasn't a single rape of a Beta woman by an Alpha in years when the rut houses were operating. Do you really think you and every other Beta girl in this City isn't going to be safer if Dean keeps all the Alphas satisfied? Grow up, Charlie. You're just as guilty as me of pimping Dean, if that's how you want to see it. The very fact you dare to stand here with an Alpha like me, with nothing but a bit of cotton between my cock and your cunt, is because if I feel the need to fuck, I have a much sweeter hole available to me. A sweeter WILLING hole."

"Yeah?" Charlie said, though she squirmed with a little fear as she suddenly felt unbearably vulnerable next to Sam's huge, alien male body and the unmistakable bulge at his groin. "Dean's so willing he's locked himself in his room for days and says he never wants to see your stupid face again as long as he lives, asshole. He isn't wearing your fucking amulet anymore, Sam."

Sam paled dramatically.

"Yes," Charlie hissed. "He isn't stupid, Sam. For the last few months, the amount of time Dean has been wearing that amulet and staggering around like a stoner, he knows he was being affected by some artificial Primá pheromones and you, you fucker, have been using it to try and turn him into a whore."

Sam shook himself visibly and then went on the defensive. "The pheromones don't turn Omegáres into whores. They work on Omegáres because they ARE whores. The pheromones don't make an Omegá want sex, they just repress the societal conditioning that makes Omegáres think they should suppress their natural desires.

"Omegáres only say 'no' because they are subjected to Beta attitudes as pups. By the time they present, they've had a dozen years of conditioning telling them to behave like Betas and that mentality is harmful to an Omegá. So the drug just frees them from the inadvertent mind-fuck they had as pups. The drug didn't make Dean act like he did. It just gave him the freedom to act that way without feeling embarrassed to embrace his needs.

"Mr Al'asfar says Dean would have been one of the last Omegáres subjected to such an inappropriate childhood if they could have passed the law to make it obligatory to test all new borns for Omegá genes. Any child identified as an Omegá would have been brought up in a special facility, rather than in Beta society, where they could have been taught to embrace their nature instead of rejecting it."

Charlie's jaw dropped in disbelief, not only of what Sam was saying but the fact he truly seemed to believe he was speaking the truth.

"A special facility just to train up an Omegá to be a willing whore? That sounds fucking obscene to me, Sam. I can confidently state it will sound pretty damned obscene to Dean too. Tell you what, let's go ask his opinion on the matter, shall we?"

Sam narrowed his eyes and growled threateningly. "Go near my Omegá ever again, bitch, and I'll have you strung naked in the City Hall and flogged. Don't test me, Charlie. I can and will do it. Interfering with a Guardian performing his obligation to his Omegá is illegal."

Charlie swallowed nervously, cringing from the red flare in his eyes and the obvious sincerity of the threat. "You're a monster," she whispered.

"I'm an Alpha protecting my Omegá ," he retorted. "You don't understand anything, Charlie. You think you're so clever but you're a Beta. You don't know anything about Omagáres. So butt out and leave Dean alone, or I'll make you regret it."


	77. Chapter Seventy Three

Charlie was still a bit shaken from her confrontation with Sam when she arrived home.

That’s probably why she didn’t particularly register the oddly nervous look on her Aunt Pam’s face as she greeted her at the door and ushered her inside. 

It _did_ strike her as a little strange that she was steered into the living room rather than the kitchen where the pair normally sat to catch up on events, but she was already inside the room before the oddity struck her and then she simply froze like a rabbit in headlights and stared in complete disbelief at the all too familiar face of the man seated on her aunt’s sofa. 

“You’re…you’re here. How are you here? You’re in Detroit. We’ve been talking to you in Detroit for days. Dean’s still talking to you now. In Detroit, inside a closed local network….” Her voice trailed off and she just shook her head in confusion.

Crowley smirked widely, his shark teeth glinting like knives. He gestured casually at the active tablet on his lap. “I’m still chatting with Dean,” he agreed, amiably.  “You aren’t the only person in the room who can piggy-back signals, Red.  We’re all still ‘in’ Detroit as far as the rest of the world knows.  But, clearly, I am actually here. I’ve been here since early this morning, to tell the truth, but your Aunt has found it somewhat difficult to convince you to come home to meet me.” 

“I didn’t know you were here,” she snapped. “Why didn’t you say you were here? Why ARE you here? I thought you still didn’t really believe us.”

“Well, obviously I just needed to keep you both occupied with answering a load of nonsensical rubbish for a couple of days whilst I put some plans in motion. I didn’t want either of you getting it into your heads to try and physically resolve anything yourselves. I’m ready to make a move now, but I wanted to ask you a couple of questions in confidence first. A few things we need to discuss out of Dean’s hearing. Hence dear Aunt Pam here urging you to come home.” 

“I’m not talking about Dean behind his back,” Charlie insisted angrily. 

Crowley grinned. “You misunderstand me, Red.  I don’t want to talk to you about _Dean_.  The Pack and I are in perfect agreement of what needs to be done for Dean.  Plans are being enacted, even as we speak, to ensure his safe permanent extraction from this intolerable situation. The burning question, though, is what on earth are we going to do with _Sam_. So I need to ask you a few very difficult questions and you, I am sure, are going to give me some very honest answers, and then we’ll be in a much better position to know exactly how to proceed.” 

“What kind of questions?” she asked suspiciously.

“Well, let’s cut to the chase. Out of ten, give me a number, Red. A lot has changed since Dean refused Daniel’s offer of help. So, what’s the odds of Dean _now_ agreeing to simply walk away and forget he even has a brother?” 

“Is that still possible?” Charlie asked. “Dean thought it was a one time only offer.” 

“It was,” Crowley agreed. “But, as I said, things have changed. The offer is firmly back on the table. The question is simply the odds of Dean agreeing to it _this_ time.”

“Honestly?  Zero.  Don’t get me wrong. Dean is pissed as hell with Sam at the moment and might even be happy to never see him again as long as he lives. But he won’t abandon him. That’s not Dean. He simply isn’t capable of being that self-serving.  He knows if he leaves then Sam will end up in an academy or dead or even in an academy and _then_ dead. And Dean won’t let that happen, _ever_.  Even if Sam deserves it.”

“And do _you_ think Sam deserves it?”

“I think Sam deserves to be flogged, castrated, skinned and then impaled by his ass in the middle of Falls Park and stoned with lots and lots and _lots_ of really _tiny_ , really _sharp_ stones,” Charlie replied sweetly, “and after a few days, if he’s still alive, I think someone should cover him in honey and tip a few buckets of termites over his head. Sadly, though, Dean doesn’t see it the same way, so returning to your earlier question, the answer is still Zero.”

Crowley arched a brow, pursing his lips in thought. “One of these days,” he said, “I really need to introduce you to a friend of mine. Meg’s going to _love_ you, Charlie Bradbury.”

~

Castiel was not surprised to receive the confirmation from Crowley that the Pack would have to accept the Beta lawyer’s offer to allow them to relocate Sam Winchester to a safe location before there was going to be any chance of Dean agreeing to be rescued himself. 

Because, as Castiel had admitted to the Beta, the exacting of righteous vengeance was close to the heart of most Pack members (and none was ever so primal in nature as a Primá), as he set events in motion he privately hoped that Dean was at least currently feeling sufficiently vengeful to accept the offer of a place in an American Pack of his choosing rather than make the decision he wanted to join his younger brother in his (possibly temporary) exile. 

The reason for that was pretty straightforward. If Dean was unwilling to be separated from Sam for the couple of years the teenage Alpha would have to stay out of America, then Castiel would be forced to send Sam to Norway. With the Sioux Falls City Council promising to allow Sam to pass through any international border security unhindered, it would be simple to pop him on a plane and send him straight to Gabriel. Norway had no extradition treaty with the American Beta Government, and Gabriel had made it clear he cared less whether he pissed any Betas off. He was, he said, perfectly happy to accept one or both of the brothers.

Norway would be an ideal environment for Dean to recover from his experiences and flourish. He might even find a large choice of Primáres still eager to offer him their mating bite. All of the Omegáres Chuck had taken there previously had firmly established a precedent for Norwegian acceptance of docked, non-virginal brides. And Castiel was of the understanding that most of the Norwegian-born Primáres were huskily built Viking-types who might even prefer a bride of similarly large stature to themselves. In Norway, an Omegá who looked like an Alpha might even be seen as a prized asset.

It would, however, be a far less ideal location for Sam's re-education. 

From what he had gathered so far from Crowley, despite his mother's attempts to educate him properly, Sam Winchester had been thoroughly corrupted by the other various Beta influences during his upbringing. So much so that Castiel barely cared to even attempt to put him straight. His personal inclination would have been to discard the youngster as sadly being probably past any reasonable chance of redemption. It wasn't that he didn't have sympathy for _all_ of the young Alphas that, according to Crowley, had apparently been subjected to some peculiar drug experimentation by the Betas, but sometimes the wisest and kindest thing to do to a dog that had deliberately been brought up to bite indiscriminately was simply to put it out of its misery with a bullet.

However, if the only way to save the Omegá was to save the Alpha too, then Castiel was prepared to do whatever it took to ensure Sam was kept safe. But he was certainly not going to let that dangerous biting puppy loose in a Pack without it being taught some damned manners first. And, somehow, he thought it was probably a bit late to hope that the application of nothing more than some gentle chastisement would do the trick of changing Sam's established patterns of behaviour. 

Castiel was sure that the only possibility of Sam being _genuinely_ redeemed from the shitty influences that had screwed his perceptions so obscenely was spending a few years as lowest ranked Alpha on a far less liberal totem pole than Norway's. 

His uncle Gabriel was an even more laid-back Primá than himself. Although both were _dutiful_ Primáres who disseminated sufficient pheromones to maintain Pack cohesion, they both did the bare minimum necessary since neither had any particularly despotic urge or necessity to enforce their will throughout their already civilised Packs. 

Which was why his Uncle Lucifer's unexpected offer to accept the refugee Alpha was SO much more tempting.

Lucifer ran his Pack with a cock of iron and that brutality of savage, regular penile application fed down the line of his entire hierarchal ranks of Alphas. Castiel suspected the asses of the very lowest ranked South American Alphas were, consequently, little more than raw open holes the majority of the time (which was why they were so inclined to brutally pass that pleasure on to all the Betas of the Pack). Castiel didn't judge Lucifer for his methods of governance. It was undoubtedly effective and the most southern countries of the American Union had been lawless and brutal places when Lucifer had been handed them by Cain after Seth's death. It had required a Prima as despotic as Lucifer to bring a veneer of civilization to the region. 

Castiel greatly enjoyed the idea of Sam Winchester spending a couple of years as the barrack bitch of Lucifer's lowest ranked Alphas. Maybe that would give Sam a true appreciation of how it felt to be considered nothing more than a hole to be fucked. And, of course, the added bonus was that each 'lesson' would be supplied with the natural application of a dose of some real pheromonal influence, filtered down to him through the hierarchy, ensuring that the experience eventually resulted in him developing a serious and genuine sense of Pack loyalty as well as a very sore ass.

It was win/win, really. 

Castiel really hoped Sam wouldn't be flying to Norway. 

Though, maybe, it would still ultimately be the best place for Dean to go to. 

~

“My name’s Jody Mills,” she said through Dean’s locked door.  “I’m the Sherriff of Falls County. I’m here on my own. I really need to talk to you face to face, Dean.  I swear if you let me in, no harm will come to you. And,” she raised her voice a little for the benefit of the teenage Alpha lurking half way up the stairs just out of her sight, “I am armed and will _happily_ shoot anyone who attempts to follow me inside.”

Although the door remained closed, she heard a little shuffling noise on the other side that suggested the Omegá was at least standing there, considering her request. 

“I was a good friend of your Uncle Bobby,” she added, in a quieter voice. “He trusted me, Dean. I know who gave the salvage yard to him and why they did so. Hopefully that means something to you.”

She heard the bolts being disengaged and almost sagged with relief. Instead, she kept one hand firmly on the handle of her weapon. She had no intention of killing Sam if he did try to charge her, but she had no compunction over planting a bullet or two in his knees. 

Jody had never met Dean, not even when she’d been slightly involved in the Metatron situation a couple of years earlier, and though, of course, she’d heard he looked ‘like an Alpha’ she was pretty stunned to meet him in the flesh. 

He was, indeed, well over six foot tall and muscled like an Alpha. He was also, though, probably the most drop dead gorgeous man she had ever laid eyes on. It was _that_ which surprised her the most. Not that he looked like an Alpha but, whilst he was as undeniably as _beautiful_ as any Omegá she had ever seen on tv, that beauty was so fundamentally _male_ that it seemed impossible he was an Omegá at all.  Particularly a ‘docked’ one. She would have imagined him to be at least a little effeminate, a little fey. Instead, he was simply as jaw-droppingly, stunningly gorgeous as any Beta  A-list film star or model and his voice was deep and confident when he greeted her with polite, if cautious, interest.

“I’m here under dual-authority,” she told him. “I am empowered by the City Council of Sioux Falls to represent the interests of the Primary Pack Council of South Dakota. This meeting has been arranged and agreed by both of those authorities. So whilst it is, by necessity, one that has been misrepresented to both of your legal guardians as a simple, procedural police check of your health and welfare in the wake of the incident last week, I can assure you that the matter I am really here to discuss with you is a sincere and achievable solution to your current situation.” 

“You said you were a friend of Bobby’s,” Dean said. “Prove it. Name who gave him the salvage yard.”

She nodded, understanding his caution. “Evan Adamson,” she confirmed. “So that Bobby could provide shelter to _you_ , Dean. For some reason, your arrival at Sioux Falls was always preordained. That is something you and I know but even the Pack that entrusted me to come here today know nothing of Evan’s involvement in your life. The only reason I was picked to be the messenger is it was believed by Daniel that between me knowing Bobby and being a woman, I might be more likely to be listened to. Had you refused to let me in, Daniel would have come himself but it was felt that it would be less than ideal to reveal the Pack’s interest to your brother before certain decisions are made.”

Dean closed his eyes in grief and rubbed his forehead fretfully. “Tell…tell Daniel… tell Daniel, I’m sorry. I’m so goddamned sorry. I know… I know it actually _hurts_ him when I refuse his help so, please, you have to tell him I am so thankful, so grateful, but I still… still can’t…”

“He knows,” she interrupted. “We all know. Listen to me. No-one’s asking you to abandon Sam to his fate here. But neither can we allow more harm to come to you.  There is a solution and I have to admit you no longer have the option to say ‘no’ to going to Pack Land, but you do still have a choice to make.”

“The Packs are supposed to always respect my right to say ‘no’,” Dean snarled.

“And they still do,” Jody assured him. “But because of, well, the stuff that’s happened recently, the Beta Council have insisted that you are sold to the Pack _immediately_. It’s no longer a case of the Pack attempting to rescue _you._ My visit here is because the Pack are attempting to rescue _Sam._ ”

Dean sat heavily on the bed, too stunned to even keep upright let alone argue. “Sam?” he queried, frowning with confusion.

“The Betas want you gone,” Jody told him bluntly, “People are scared of you. More to the point, the Alphas are scared of you, so the Council can’t see any point in keeping you here any longer anyway.  The problem is, the Council can’t _make_ Sam sell you. So it looks really likely that something will be done by the Betas to make Sam ‘disappear’ one way or the other if we can’t agree something today, Dean.

“Now, obviously Daniel knows how much it would hurt you if something happened to Sam, so the Pack has engineered a situation where the Betas are willing to let Sam leave the country. He’ll have to spend a couple of years living in a Pack in a safer place. Once he’s eighteen, he can come back to America if he wants to, obviously.”

“So Sam goes abroad to live in a Pack and I go where?” Dean demanded.

“Well, that’s where you have the options,” Jody said.  “Firstly, as Daniel has apparently already told you, as an Omegá in Pack Land, your personal preferences will always be given priority. Obviously, because of the situation, the Pack is a little limited in its initial offerings but Daniel’s preference is that you join him in Pierre initially and then the two of you can work together to find a more permanent solution. However, Sam needs to leave the country before you can even be ‘sold’.  The decision you need to make today is whether you are prepared to be separated from Sam until he’s old enough to return or whether you wish to join him abroad. Apparently, the choice of where he can go would be limited by your insistance on remaining with him, as an appropriate situation would have to be found for _both_ of you.”

“So he’d have less options if I wanted to stay with him?” Dean queried.

“Well, _your_ welfare would always take priority in Pack eyes,” Jody replied innocently. “If he were going somewhere alone, the Pack could instead consider the best place for _him._ ”

It is possibly important, at this point, to mention that Jody was simply telling the truth as it had been explained to her by Daniel. She had not been told what particular factors might be considered in deciding what place might be ‘best’ for Sam.  And so her words were uttered with an unmistakeable sincerity and it was her honesty that convinced Dean more than her words.

“And he’d be absolutely safe?”

“Considerably more than if he stays here,” she said, and again her words were honest and, this time, not even subject to interpretation.

“He won’t agree to it,” Dean pointed out. “Apparently, I’m _his_ Omegá,” he said, with a sneer of disgust.

“It’s not _his_ permission that is being requested,” Jody replied. “Say it can be done, and it _will_ be done, Dean.  This is _your_ decision, not _his_.”

Later, perhaps, when he looked back at the choice he made at this exact point in time and its later implications, the realisation he’d been so easily manipulated _himself_ cast Sam’s own mistakes in a kinder light. Definitely there was a time in the future when he made a decision directly _because_ of his memory of making _this_ one.

But then again, in view of what happened shortly after Jody left that day, the choice he made would have been _definitely_ the same one even had he understood the less palatable details of what the packs had failed to tell him. So the only thing that ever gave him any future pause was the knowledge he’d _already_ made the choice before it was, effectively, made for him anyway.

“I could live with being separated from Sam for a little while,” he said. “As long as I am absolutely guaranteed he’s safe. I think it would be best for both of us to be apart for a while. Maybe let him grow up a bit. Perhaps living in a Pack will clear his thinking a bit.”

Jody patted him on the shoulder approvingly.

“I’ll go tell Daniel your decision, Dean. I’m sure he’ll be very relieved to know you’ll be with him soon.”

 


	78. Chapter Seventy Four

The next morning, after Azazel received an unexpected package of paperwork from a courier and read its contents, he shut himself in his study and made a few hurried phone calls to several of his peers.

By the time he finished his final call, he was still uncertain whether Lucifer would consider he should be congratulated or chastised. Some of the rainbow group considered his precipitous actions had put their own projects at risk by pushing the agenda forward a couple of years. Others were impressed he had managed to engineer a situation where Sam's crucial part in the overall plan could be given such a beneficial jump start. It had always been considered highly unfortunate that John Winchester's first born had been an Omegá. The timescale of everything would always have been moved forwards considerably if Dean had been the one to present as the Alpha.

So, to that extent, Azazel's own mistakes and miscalculations had actually, if inadvertently, simply moved the entire situation into a far more convenient timeline to ensure Lucifer's other plans could proceed in a timely manner.

But in engineering a necessity for such a swift resolution to the Sam situation, Azazel had run out of time to settle an absolutely crucial aspect of the Dean conundrum.

The package he'd received from the offices of the local Beta City Council that morning had made it clear that in less than ten hours he and Sam would be boarding a plane to South America. The fact he would be accompanying Sam was, in the eyes of the local authorities, merely a legal nicety to explain how they allowed an underage pup to board the plane in the first place. The fact they had been convinced to do it in that fashion was highly suggestive that Lucifer was using the opportunity to allow Azazel to escape America before the Packs became aware of what had been done to Dean.

The problem, of course, was that Azazel had less than ten hours to ensure it was done at all.

And, obviously, to ensure that the paperwork for the procedure was signed and dated by Sam just to leave it in no doubt whatsoever that the young Alpha had agreed to it being done.

Why that was still so important was that the Packs had to absolutely believe the procedure had been done specifically to ensure Dean's sexual compliance and who, other than Sam, would have any reason whatsoever to still want Dean altered in such a fundamental way at this juncture?

Given that the other Alphas in Sioux Falls were more likely to piss themselves than get an erection should Dean enter a room these days, there was no reason any 'supposed' Beta Government agent like himself would see any benefit in applying a control mechanism over Dean's surprisingly rather vicious Flores.

It would, however, make perfect sense to the Packs that Sam, faced with the imminent threat of having his Omegá 'stolen' and himself exiled to another country, might have made a panicked, last ditch attempt to prove that Dean's co-operation could be enforced by 'muting' him.

Obviously, since Sam wouldn't have been aware his own departure was so very imminent, it would make sense that he'd sign the paperwork for the procedure and arrange for it to happen, believing he still had time to change the minds of the local authorities, and it would be irrelevant if the procedure actually physically happened when it was already too late to be of benefit to him since he wouldn't be offered any opportunity to cancel what he'd already set in motion.

So the Packs would see the result, would see the evidence of the paperwork, and would draw their own conclusions.

The only, but significant, problem was ensuring that it was done somehow between the point Sam was taken to the airport and the moment the Packs received the phone call from South America confirming Sam's safe arrival and signed the document for the 99 year fief that incorporated Dean's sale to the Packs.

Allowing for a twelve hour flight and physical transfer from the Rio airport to Lucifer's Pack Hall, plus an hour or two for Detroit to complete the deal with the Sioux Falls' lawyers, Azazel had a maximum of 24 hours to get Dean 'ready' for the Pack to collect and he'd spend more than half of that short period stuck on an airplane and therefore unable to act himself.

And even that tiny window of opportunity would close if the Beta authorities decided that they should take Dean into protective custody for the period between Azazel departing and the Pack completing the sale since the moment the plane took off, both of Dean's 'legal' guardians would be gone.

But proving perhaps that Lucifer was somehow far more aware of the entire situation than even Azazel had imagined, less than an hour after the courier had called, the front door bell sounded again and, this time, the visitor whilst equally unexpected was totally and most welcomingly familiar.

"I hear you've been a very busy little Beta," the visitor purred, his eyes bright with humor.

And, filled with relief, Azazel ushered his brother inside the house.

~~

"This is Doctor Lues," Azazel said, introducing the thin, tall Beta to his Alpha charge. "He's come to do that little procedure on Dean's thyroid that we discussed. The one that will correct his defective Flores."

"I thought the operation would be done in a hospital," Sam replied suspiciously, totally confused by the presence of the strange Beta in their house.

"It's just a tiny out-patient procedure. It barely even necessitates local anaesthetic," the Doctor assured him. "It's such a minor thing it barely warrants the description of 'operation'."

Sam frowned at Azazel. "I thought you said it was keyhole surgery," he challenged.

"I did," Azazel said, flushing with apparent embarrassment. "But I'm not a doctor. The serious nature of Dean's affliction naturally led me to assume the cure would be equally drastic. However, it turns out it really is such a straightforward process that it could even be done by a nursing student. Still, for your peace of mind I have gone to the considerable expense of requesting Dr Lues, who is a prominent surgeon, to do it himself."

"Well, it's a five minute thing admittedly," Lues shrugged, "but my time is valuable, Mr Al'asfar. If you sign the paperwork and fetch the patient, I'll be out of here in a few minutes."

"Oh, it's Sam who needs to sign," Azazel pointed out. "Dean is his Omegá."

"Whatever," Lues shrugged indifferently.

"I don't know about this," Sam said. "It's not that I'm doubting you both mean well and, if it's such a minor thing, I can't imagine it's a big deal. And obviously if Dean is ill I do, of course, want him to be cured. But still, like you told me before, I have a responsibility to check what I sign. After what happened with the docking, I now realise I really need a second opinion before I agree to anything at all. I don't want to make another mistake."

Azazel nodded him clear approval of Sam's newly found sense of responsibility. "You're absolutely correct," he agreed, "and under normal circumstances I would applaud you showing such careful consideration. Unfortunately, these are not normal circumstances. I was, honestly, hoping to avoid telling you this since I am positive the moment we can prove the Doctor has corrected Dean's little defect we can swiftly change their minds but, well...."

"Change whose minds about what?" Sam demanded.

"I'm sure you've heard the rumours about the eviction notice?"

Sam nodded.

"Well, the City Council intend to steal your Omegá and sell him to the Local Pack in exchange for a new fief," Azazel told him bluntly. "They're only willing to do so, obviously, because Dean is considered to be defective. We both know that, normally, an Omegá is an immensely valuable commodity so hardly something that would be offered just to sweeten a deal."

"They can't do that. He's mine. Legally mine. He isn't theirs to sell!" Sam growled, his eyes firing crimson.

"He would be if you abandoned him."

Sam scoffed rudely. "As if I'd do that."

"You aren't going to be given a choice. Remember that sheriff who came yesterday? Well I've been informed she's returning in a few hours with a team of police officers who are going to forcibly escort both of us to the airport and make us take a flight out of the country.

"You can see the evidence for yourself, Sam. I have plane tickets here in our names for flights later today to Rio de Janeiro and here, see your passport? You already have an approved visa stamp. The minute we board that plane, the local government will declare Dean to have been abandoned by both of us and will then sell him to the South Dakota Pack. 

"The only way you can stop this happening is if you can stop them wanting to sell Dean in the first place. We need to get his Flores fixed immediately so the other Alphas stop fearing him. If we can prove the procedure has been done by the time the Sheriff arrives, we can stop this entire situation occurring. So sign the papers, Sam, and let Dr Lues do his job."

"Where do I sign?" Sam demanded, with grim determination.

And Azazel smiled.

~~

When Jody Mills arrived two hours later with her team of deputies to perform the formal transfer of Azazel and Sam to the airport, the Beta met her at the door with a look of sheepish apology.

"There's been a problem," he confessed immediately.

"If anything's happened to Dean," she began, her eyes narrowing dangerously and her hand moving automatically towards her weapon.

Azazel raised his hands in a gesture of peaceful denial. "Not Dean," he assured her quickly. "Dean is still safely locked in his room and has been since you left him yesterday. I would never have let Sam harm him. The problem is with Sam. I took the advice supplied in the documents sent to me this morning and didn't tell Sam about your plans but, obviously, I wasn't happy with the idea of leaving Dean here, unprotected, for the time it took to fly Sam to Rio and then return as suggested to escort Dean over the Pack border as his remaining legal guardian. So I arranged for my brother, Alastair, to come and act in loco parentis during my absence. Unfortunately, Sam overheard the two of us discussing the situation. You know, yourself, the pup has an unfortunate tendency to 'lurk'."

Jody nodded. She had, indeed, seen Sam do the same when she had visited the day before so she could visualise what Azazel was saying.

"Well, fortunately, my brother is a doctor so rather than try to deal with a somewhat enraged Alpha by physical means, I...well, I must confess to having, somewhat illegally, I suppose, slipped a little something into the glass of water I gave him as I attempted to calm him down. I didn't realise it would work quite so effectively on such a strapping pup. Sam is, unfortunately, going to have to be carried onto the plane because it doesn't appear like he's going to regain consciousness for a few hours. I hope you brought some strong deputies."

Jody scowled at him for the admission but there was no point in her denying a certain amount of relief that Sam was going to be escorted under sedation rather than in handcuffs. Enraged Alphas were frequently capable of breaking even metal restraints.

"I just want to check on Dean before I leave," she said, motioning for a couple of the stronger deputies to assist the carrying of the unconscious pup to the car.

Fortunately, Azazel hadn't been lying. Dean was perfectly fine when she nipped upstairs and visited him. He was surprised everything had moved so quickly. He hadn't apparently even heard whatever commotion had occurred that had resulted in Sam being sedated.

"Do you want to see him before he goes?" Jody offered. "He's unconscious but perfectly physically unharmed and it's probably as well for everyone that he'll be safely in Pack Land before he even realises what's happened. He's only going to South America, so he'll be close but there's still no extradition treaty with the US, so he's going to be perfectly safe there.

"Will I be able to visit him?"

"It depends on your legal status, I think," Jody replied thoughtfully. "If you choose to be mated, I believe you can travel freely across any border as a bonded Omegá because you're accorded the legal freedoms of your Primá. It's more problematic for an unbonded Omegá to travel outside of Pack Land. I believe you can only do so with an Alpha Guardian according to Beta Law. So, as far as I know, unless you find a Primá you wish to mate with, you might not be able to see Sam again until he can travel to you."

"Then, yeah, I think I want to say goodbye to him," Dean decided.

As they descended the stairs together, she explained that Azazel's brother was apparently going to be acting as his guardian during Azazel's brief absence and then the Beta would be flying back to escort him over the Pack border as soon as the assurances were given that Sam was safe and the fief agreement had been signed by all parties. 

"I'm sure you'll be in Pierre with Daniel by this time tomorrow," she assured him.

"It doesn't seem possible that it's been so easy," Dean admitted. "I've been kind of waiting for something really terrible to happen to fuck everything up."

Jody nodded her understanding.

"I know what you mean," she agreed, as they both watched the insate Sam being carefully folded into the backseat of one of the police cruisers. "It does all seem a bit anticlimactic now. I kind of expected us having to drag Sam off at gunpoint."

"Sammy was a really sweet pup," Dean said, looking at his brother with eyes dark with grief. "Sometimes I think I don't know this Sam at all. The Alpha thing has really fucked him up. But as soon as he's in a Pack, with a Primá, I know he'll be able to get a handle on it. And, besides, by eighteen his rut rage will be over anyway. One way or the other, I know my Sammy will come back to me. I have to remember that because, otherwise, I wouldn't be able to face the fact that now, this minute, I'm really relieved to see him go."

Jody smiled at him compassionately and patted his arm. "I've got to go to the airport now, to personally ensure Sam gets away safely, but I'm leaving a patrol car outside with a couple of officers, just in case, and Mr Al'asfar's brother, Alastair, is staying in the house with you. He's a doctor and a Beta and seems a perfectly pleasant man and you're twice the size of him anyway because he's as skinny as a beanpole. It's probably better for you to stay here tonight than being taken to a temporary foster situation. But if you feel at all unsafe or uncomfortable at any point, just call 911 and lock yourself in your room and I'll come and fetch you myself."

"I'll be fine," he assured her. "Go look after Sam for me."

He declined her offer to go say his goodbye at the car. It was pointless anyway, given that Sam was unconscious and, honestly, he wasn't sure he was ready yet to be that physically close to his brother even if he was fully sedated.

So he just stood there and watched silently as the two cop cars pulled away from the house and disappeared down the road.

Then he walked back inside.

Azazel's brother was waiting in the hall, a tall thin Beta with a smile on his face but cold, dark eyes and Dean instinctively felt a small shiver of distrust. Perhaps it was simply a transfer of his distrust of Azazel himself, but he decided he definitely wanted to avoid him.

So he just offered him a civil nod of acknowledgement and stepped past him, deciding he'd rather spend another night locked in his room than in the company of any relation of Azazel Al'asfar.

He was half way up the stairs when he felt it. A tiny sting in the back of his neck as though he'd been bitten by an insect. His right hand reached for his neck to rub the sting and his fingers found the source of his sudden pain and came back bloody, clutching a tiny dart.

Instead of turning and confronting Alastair, Dean had the sense to move upwards, desperately racing towards the safe sanctuary of his room even as his vision swam and his legs weakened. If only he could get inside, draw a bolt, before the rapidly acting sedative stole his ability to move at all, he knew he could call for help. Jody had left two cops outside, they could be inside in seconds to help him if he could only escape long enough to call them.

He made it to his door, staggered inside, one step, then two but even as he turned to try to close the door protectively behind him, his balance went and he crashed heavily to his knees, swaying in confusion, his eyelids closing, his heart's rapidly hammering panic already stuttering to lethargic indifference.

And, as he slumped towards the floor, he barely even noticed Alastair slipping into the room, a large brown doctor's case in his hands and a satisfied smirk on his face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so when I said I never deliberately stopped at cliff hangers I clearly was telling a big fat lie.


	79. Chapter Seventy Five

When Dean woke he was, totally unexpectedly, in the basement.

How the skinny Beta, Alastair, had managed to achieve that was beyond him, since he didn't feel bruised enough to have been simply dragged down two flights of stairs.

Still, the mysterious way he'd arrived in the basement was of considerably less import than the reason he'd apparently been transported there.

Sickeningly, he was in the Omegá chair once more, tipped onto his back, his arms and legs strapped into restraints that stretched his limbs out into a starfish position and his head was held in place by a fat strap across his forehead and a thick, gag was strapped into his mouth, its presence depressing his tongue and pressing back to the rear of his throat in such a way that breathing was problematical. Possibly that was why he had barely any sensation in his restrained limbs and, equally, why the Beta was sitting on a stool between his open legs and doing 'something' to his Flores which was evidently wide open given that both Alastair's hands appeared to be inside Dean's body.

Dean flexed himself experimentally, attempting to close himself to sever the bastard's hands at the wrist but he literally couldn't even feel whether his Flores was responding at all and nothing interrupted the concentration of the Beta who appeared to be rummaging inside his body, so it appeared he was not succeeding in his efforts to regain control.

Alastair did, however, seem to hear the faint sounds of protest that escaped around the edges of the gag as Dean attempted to howl his offended fury because, although he didn't look up from what he was doing, he did start talking, almost conversationally, as he continued to slide hands holding a number of different tubes and needle like contraptions in and out of Dean's vagina.

"I apologise. It's a little undignified I know," he said, as he withdrew a tube, checked its contents, carefully placed it in his bag and then reached for a long syringe of a pale, blue liquid. "And this particular drug I'm now using could have been inserted surgically, I suppose, but it's easier from this direction because I have so much more access. Quite a marvellous thing, really, an Omegá cunt, I mean. It's far easier to work with two hands and with you so beautifully relaxed like this I can get both arms right up inside you and feel precisely what I am doing. The last thing I want to do is cause any damage to you.

"I want this particular procedure to work for maybe as long as twelve months, Dean, so in addition to this initial dose I also need to insert a slow-release patch right inside the entrance to your womb. There's a scent gland there located next to the gland that produces your slick and it's there, in the scent gland, that your particular hormonal signature is created. The one that gives you your own peculiarly unique scent. The scent that your destined mate would be able to unfailingly identify even if you were in a room with a thousand other Omegáres.

"That's just one of a number of problems I've had to find ways to overcome. You really have caused me an unbelievable number of sleepless nights coming up with ways to avoid everything unravelling the minute that damned Primá first meets you. What on earth were the odds of you being _the_ Winchester Omegá and _also_ being a destined true mate of a Grandé Alpha Primá? You really have simply been a victim of the most terrible luck, really.

"Just a second, I need to concentrate for a moment."

Alastair paused, lubricated both arms to the elbow with thick gel, then picked up a small round device that looked a little like a button and buried both his arms back inside Dean's body. Dean could feel the pressure of being filled and the feel of Alastair's arms as they moved inside him but the sensations were muffled and distinctly non-sexual. He had the impression of being forced to suffer an undignified gynaecological procedure rather than any sense of sexual assault. Though, the feeling of violation remained the same.

"There," Alastair said, with considerable satisfaction as he removed his arms and wiped them on a towel. "Hopefully it might work for as long as a year but, definitely, it will work for a minimum of six months. That drug will slightly change your slick signature to one rather...um...unpleasant, I suppose. A little undertone of sour added to your sweet, shall we say? Nothing too obvious to anyone except _your_ Primá but enough to convince him that you can't possibly be his true mate.

"Of course, it wouldn't matter so much if you weren't so absolutely stunning, Dean, so really you only have yourself to blame. No Primá could ever set eyes on you and not be tempted to take a long hard sniff in the hope you might be their intended. But don't be too upset with me. It's only temporary. I assure you that absolutely everything that happens to you at my hands will only ever be temporary. Nobody is trying to prevent your 'happily ever after' moment from ever happening. We just need to...delay it a little."

Alastair stood up, moved his stool to the other side of the chair, so he was seated by Dean's head, and laid out a number of instruments on a green cloth.

"So we're just going to do a little adjustment to your throat. Now, I doubt you know about how muting works in an Omegá. It's something that was discovered quite by accident about ten years ago. Just as that penile gag is keeping your Flores open, despite the marvellous muscular control you've been displaying of late, the removal of an Omegá's tonsils causes so much internal scar tissue that the body interprets that scarring as being a permanent gag. A muted Omegá completely loses the ability to control their Flores. Actually, they lose so much fine motor control that they also, as a side effect, lose the ability to speak at all.

"Calm down, Dean. There's little point you rolling your eyes in panic. I've already told you I'm not doing anything permanent. I'm just going to insert this long needle here and, very carefully, cut a long incision inside your upper esophagus. Your body will react to the injury in exactly the same way as it would to a traditional muting. However, with the advanced healing ability of an Omegá to regenerate cell damage, the truth that seems to have completely escaped the Packs so far is that _any_ muted Omegá will eventually regain their voice and control of their Flores anyway, because all the scar tissue will eventually slough off as the underlying cells repair themselves.

"But the process could take a couple of decades in the normal scheme of things and nobody needs _you_ affected for that long, Dean. A couple of years should be perfectly sufficient for our purposes. So I will just give you a long but relatively shallow scar inside your throat and I apologise that it will make swallowing and eating rather uncomfortable for quite a while. But I'll inject you with a broad-range antibiotic to reduce the chance of infection so, hopefully, you shouldn't suffer any unnecessary side effects.

"Now, obviously, there's no point doing this at all if the Pack don't assume it is a far more permanent procedure. We need them to look at you and think 'Claire', so unfortunately I'm going to have to leave you with quite an unnecessarily vicious scar on the outside of your throat also. But I'm just doing it for dramatic initial effect. I promise it will look far worse than it truly is and it, again, will fade completely in a few years. It also will encourage them to supply you with further antibiotics and painkillers so that will be a clear advantage for you in avoiding an esophagal infection.

"You see, what you have to understand, pretty pup, is that the minute Castiel Cainson sees you he is going to immediately know you are _his_ Omegá. Oh, you look genuinely stunned. I don't suppose you had any idea. Well, I might as well come clean as it will be just as obvious to you in a couple of days. The thing is, though, Dean, that there are a few absolutely critical things that need to be done really before the pair of you are allowed to go off and play happy families together.

"And if Castiel had left the rut houses alone, you would have spent several years with so many Alphas in your ass that it probably would have taken at least a couple more years in a Pack recovering before you would have even considered accepting a mating bite.

"And if my brother had done his job of corrupting Sam properly, you would have spent at least the next two years being fucked by every Sioux Falls Alpha and again would probably have refused the idea of mating for a while afterwards.

"So everything I am having to do to you today is _their_ fault really, Dean. Because you were never supposed to be going to Pack Land this early or this relatively untouched.

"It is absolutely critical that Castiel takes one look at you and sees you as a pitiful mutilated whore, Dean. And, just in case that isn't enough to make him reject you, he needs to take one sniff of you and know you are not his destined mate anyway.

"Now, the reason you need to be muted is that obviously you and I know he IS your intended mate and that means that even if you walked in there tomorrow, with no interference from me, despite your rather magnificent Flores control, I absolutely guarantee you would take one sniff of his gorgeous pheremonal signature and you would flood the room with slick. It would be inevitable, Dean. Sad, and a little embarrassing maybe, but true. If any Omegá is ever so fortunate as to have the one in a million opportunity to meet their absolute, one and only, _true mate_ , the one whose pheremonal signature resonates absolutely perfectly with their own slick signature, that Omegá will simply gush more slick than Niagara Falls and you would be lucky not to simply drop to your hands and knees and present yourself for his cock.

"It's a primal biological imperative. An Omegá meeting a Primá so perfect for them would feel absolutely compelled to ensnare that Primá immediately.

"So we know, whatever you might think or believe, no matter how much you might want not to do it, you _will_ react that way to Castiel.

"So our only way to prevent your inevitably embarrassing enthusiasm resulting in the pair of you immediately mating is for Castiel to believe the reason you are gushing slick is simply that he is a Primá, not that he is _your_ Primá. That, like Claire, you have been so mutilated that you are nothing more than a sex-crazed, barely sane victim of your own imperative to be impregnated by any available Primá cock.

"I know," he agreed, nodding at Dean's silent horrified fury. "It is a truly evil plan and I apologise most sincerely. It is however, hopefully less evil in that although this is something you must and will suffer, at least you will understand that it is OUR fault that Castiel will reject you, not his own failing. Hopefully, that will give you some measure of comfort in the hard times to come that this, too, will pass. That a time will come, in the not too distant future, when Castiel will finally realise that he has misjudged you and rejected you in error.

"And, that leads me to my final, unfortunate confession. Because you are a well educated pup, perfectly able to communicate by writing or typing, and obviously the plan depends on you being unable to communicate at all, at least long enough for Castiel to make the decision you need to be sent away to live in an appropriate environment to deal with your unfortunate afflictions, I will be damaging a number of the nerves in your arms and shoulders. That will cause a very serious palsy in your hands that will make it virtually impossible to even feed yourself successfully, let alone attempt to use your hands for communication. Again, that damage will be extremely temporary. You will probably repair _that_ particular damage in no more than a few weeks but, by that time, you will be safely in your new accommodations.

"And because some of those procedures are somewhat uncomfortable, I'm going to sedate you now. I have no desire whatsoever to cause you any more physical discomfort than necessary. And although I obviously will be gone before the Pack representatives arrive to collect you in the morning, and you are unlikely to have awoken by then, I do promise I will leave you upstairs, decently dressed and bridled so that you are not subject to any unnecessary humiliation when you are discovered."


	80. Chapter Seventy Six

Since Jody hadn't specified an actual time she might arrive, Dean was uncertain whether the Pack were late collecting him or if he had recovered from the anaesthesia faster than expected but, either way, he woke feeling nauseous and woozy with a raging thirst when the dawn had barely broken and the house had the quiet stillness that suggested his sole occupancy.

As he struggled to rise from the bed, desperate to assuage the burning ache in his throat, his limbs were leaden and uncooperative. He felt as gangly and graceless as a new born colt as he struggled to stand on legs that felt too tremulous and weak to bear his weight. Still, at least that fucker, Alastair, had kept his promise to dress him respectfully. He was safety enrobed in one of the most voluminous of the gowns Daniel had provided for him, one that he had rarely worn since it had been more suited to a more formal occasion than school attendance.

Although the material was as fine and sheer as all of the gowns, this particular one was spiderwebbed with a myriad of intricate hand stitched embroidery in only a slightly darker shade than the gossamer fine silk of the main garment itself. So the rich patterns were subtle yet intriguing, drawing an observer's attention as they attempted to interpret the finely sown beautiful artwork rather than peer through the fabric to the flesh beneath. It was a masterpiece of visual sleight of hand, so subtly 'Daniel' in form and execution that Dean had often sat and simply stared at the gown on its hanger and felt the comfort of the older Omegá's presence just from such a visual representation of Daniel's innate flair.

He couldn't even begin to imagine how it felt to be Daniel, navigating life so carefully as a being of both immense power and terrible vulnerability. It was the style with which Daniel glided so seemingly effortlessly through those dichotomies that Dean so envied and admired. Unlike Chuck who, possibly because of his upbringing as a Winchester in a Beta world, clung on to the desire to dress himself as a Beta and use that clothing as a defensive armour, Daniel embraced his designation and used nakedness as an offensive weapon, clothing himself in a way that denied anyone the ability to objectify his body even as he, himself, displayed his flesh with pride.

As Dean staggered towards his bathroom, struggling with his balance but gaining a little equilibrium with each awkward, wobbling step, his mind was already racing to find a solution to the new nightmare he had been plunged into.

Like any Omegá faced with being 'muted', even in the way Alastair had chosen to do it, Dean was facing a number of physical challenges. Firstly, although he was not suffering a full 'ragdoll' reaction, he definitely had been affected to a significant effect. His reactions were sluggish, his steps hesitant and performed with limbs that felt too heavy and yet spongily loose. He wasn't sure walking without some support would have been possible at all had he not previously gained so much experience of walking in a state of stoned confusion. Though his ability to think was not specifically affected by the muting, his muscular control was definitely on par to the way he had felt when under the influence of the pheremonal overdose.

And whilst the muting was not directly affecting his 'thinking', it was definitely affecting his feelings. His nerves were on a knife edge as his weakened physical state and non-responsive Flores were combining to keep reminding him he was vulnerable. And vulnerability was danger; and danger was fear; and fear caused his body to weaken; and weakness created vulnerability; and so the loop continued.

For an average Omegá, whose mind responded to threat with submission, that loop of fear would have closed around him like an ever tightening noose, contracting his breathing like the tightening coils of an invisible snake, and the more he hyperventilated to compensate for the choking sense of suffocation, the more likely he would have been to plummet off the cliff into a full-blown ragdoll reaction, offering his Flores in desperation in whatever direction the next assault came from.

Whilst he was undoubtedly afflicted physically the same way as any other Omegá, Dean's more usual mental reaction to fear was temper.

The more scared he felt, the more mad he got. The more vulnerable he felt, the more his natural reaction was to strike out blindly to defend himself.

So, against all odds and probabilities, Dean's overall response to being muted was simply to be as pissed as fuck about it.

As he fumbled with the faucet, his stupid, trembling, useless hands taking an interminable age to even co-operate enough to turn the water on, he stared almost dispassionately in the mirror at the ragged ugly scar that stretched a full four inches across the base of his throat. It was, he admitted to himself after his first reaction of shocked horror, not really that awful. It had been made to appear savagely brutal by the deliberate use of thick black stitches to seal the wound. After the stitches were removed, and the skin was no longer puckered by the thread, he would be left with nothing more than a thin fine line which would fade in time completely.

It was just smoke and mirrors.

Like the dress he was wearing, really.

Dean gave up even trying to grasp a glass and simply plunged his face under the running faucet,  gulping hungrily at the water. The coolness soothed the dryness in his mouth, eased the cotton-woolish feel of his tongue, even as the sensation of swallowing caused a sharp, unpleasant burn in his throat where, presumably, the action inflamed his internal wound. Indeed, the moment his throat performed the act of swallowing, his knees abruptly weakened and he staggered slightly before adjusting his balance once more by willpower alone.

Great. So it looked like even drinking and, presumably eating, would have to be done with extreme caution if he wasn't going to accidentally trigger a full blown ragdoll reaction in himself.

Fucker.

Fucking bastard fucker!

Dean still had absolutely no idea what the fuck Alastair, and Azazel, were truly intending. Despite Alastair's cartoon-villain monologue, as he'd evidently felt the need to outline so much of his oh-so-clever dastardly plan, Dean was honestly still completely and utterly bemused as to how the fuck the Beta Government could gain any perceivable advantage whatsoever in interfering in his life at all.

What the hell difference could it possibly make to anyone whether he mated Castiel or not? Let alone _when_ he might do so. How could a marriage inside Pack Land have any bearing whatsoever on Beta society?

And let's not forget the pertinent suggestion that Castiel...

The Castiel  

Castiel Cainson, no less, hero of not a few masturbatory fantasies in his youth, truth be told,

...was his true mate.

It was so beyond comprehension that he couldn't really believe it might be true. He felt like some no-body fanboy who had suddenly been told the object of his fantasies was going to take one look at him and declare him to be 'the one'. It was an idea so harlequin that it beggared belief.

Though, equally, he knew it had to be _somehow_  true for Alastair and Azazel and their masters, whoever they were, to have gone to so much goddamned trouble to screw with him.

And, though there was, obviously some romantic part of him that eagerly embraced the idea as something desirable there was, equally, a substantial part of him that responded to the idea of playing a grateful 'princess' apparently simply awaiting rescue by Castiel's 'prince' in this modern day fairy tale with a sincere "fuck THAT shit!"

But parking that particular thorny issue for later self-reflection, the important question was why the fuck did the Free Betas care anyway?

Charlie's research and conclusions about the fake Primá pheromones had made a certain amount of sense to him. He could see why the Free Betas might be obsessed with the need to control rut rage. He could even understand (though obviously not agree with) why unscrupulous Betas might use an Omegá as part of their solution. Sick and wrong as it was, it at least made logical sense for them to do it.

But it made no sense whatsoever why the Betas would care what happened inside a Pack. The only thing he could have understood, really, though just the idea made him nauseous to contemplate, was if Alastair had instead taken the opportunity to simply sterilise him. The only logical ultimate solution for the Betas, surely, was to prevent the birth of more Primáres. So if he really was the 'destined' mate of Castiel Cainson, wouldn't the most obvious thing be to ensure he could never whelp a pup?

With that thought, his mental armour collapsed.

Dean's knees gave way completely and he crashed heavily to the floor, a flood of aching despair overwhelming his entire body. Stabbing, knifing waves of gut-churning pain began to emanate outwards from his empty womb, like demanding, yearning silent howls of hungry demand. And he whimpered helplessly as his own body reacted to the idea of barrenness with an instinctive fury of punishing denial.

It was only in that moment, as even an idle thought was so bitterly punished by his own body's instinctive reaction to that _idea_ , that Dean realised how absolutely, fundamentally, he was pre-programmed to desire impregnation.

Sure, he'd heard what Alastair had said about wanting Castiel to see him as nothing more than a mindless pup factory, begging for impregnation by a Primá cock, so it would have been easy to put his body's reaction down to a side effect of the 'muting' and yes, perhaps, the terrible intensity of the pain he was feeling was due to that physical manipulation.

But Dean didn't do 'easy'. There were enough deceivers in his life without adding a dose of self-deception into the mix too. Maybe the _intensity_ was false but the feelings themselves were true.

He wanted a pup. No. He _needed_ a pup. Maybe not today, despite his body saying otherwise, and maybe not even soon, though the yearning for it to be so was undeniable but definitely _someday_.

He could overcome anything thrown at him, any pain or indignity or mutilation or humiliation. But not that. Not the idea he would _never_ feel life sparking inside him, never feel a pup grow inside his womb, never hold a pup in his arms, never...

As he panicked, and hyperventilated, and flailed and shook on the cold bathroom floor, as the more he he struggled for breath the less his body co-operated with his attempt to control it, the worst, most terrible thing was that he couldn't even scream his despair in a primal roar of outrage. He could only whimper and gasp and sob as his heart hammered and his head felt it might simply explode from the furious panic that rose inside him with no possible release valve to reduce the pressure.

And, so, like countless Omegáres before him, despite all his cleverness and determination and sheer ornery cussed, spitting, furious defiance, in that moment of complete physical _and_ mental vulnerability, his body simply collapsed into a state of utter compliance, and he passed out on the bathroom floor, his brain and body shutting down in self-protection.

~

Allowing for the need for Azazel Al'asfar to escort Sam safely to Lucifer's Pack Hall, settle the pup in, return to the airport and take a twelve hour flight back to Sioux Falls, Sheriff Jody Mills was expecting him to land at the airport on the flight scheduled to arrive at 10.43 in the morning.

She had already received notification that the fief agreement had been signed in Detroit, so she had been instructed to escort Azazel to collect Dean from home, then drive the pair of them directly to Pierre in the middle of a protective convoy. Two more squad cars were already parked outside Azazel's house, relieving the two officers who had guarded the place the night before, since everyone was doubly aware that the fate of Sioux City rested on ensuring the young Omegá was safely handed over to Ophriel as stipulated in the fief.

The night shift officers had reported that Alastair Al'asfar had left the premises much earlier that morning, pausing only to cheerfully advise them that Dean was safely locked in his own room but had sent Alastair on an extended mission of frantic shopping so that he could arrive at Pack Land in style.

That had surprised Jody, to be honest, since Dean hadn't struck her as _that_ kind of Omegá. She'd immediately raised her concern to the Beta Council, suggesting it might be wisest if she swung by on her way to the airport to double check everything was fine. But they had dismissed her concern with quite a large degree of condescension, pointing out that all Omagáres loved fripperies and, clearly, even an Omegá as peculiar as Dean was obviously smart enough to understand that Beta department stores offered far more wealth of choice than would be available to him in Pack Land shops. Besides, under the circumstances, the City Councillors were eager that Dean did, indeed, arrive with sufficient luggage to suggest he was a more valuable commodity than the more usual, naked, possession-less, ex-ruthouse Omegá.

By 11.22, when the arrivals hall had cleared and even a frantic search of the customs hall had confirmed no Beta was being officially delayed, a double-check with the airline confirmed that although Azazel Al'asfar had been named on the flight manifest, he had not, in actuality, boarded the flight in Rio.

He was therefore, presumably, still in South America.

Although that in itself could have had an innocent explanation, his failure to notify anyone that he had somehow missed his flight rang a huge alarm bell in Jody's head.

Even as she ran to her car, she put a call in to the officers outside Azazel's house to break in, if necessary, and check on Dean's welfare.

~

Fortunately for Sam, Dean had woken from his panicked faint over three hours before Jody's deputies broke into the house.

Why Dean's self-recovery proved critical was that when he tottered carefully out of the bathroom and noted that Alastair had helpfully packed all of Dean's other gowns into a suitcase, presumably to expedite his 'sale', he also found the paperwork Sam had signed to authorise his 'muting'.

It took him a while to read through the document because even attempting to turn pages over was such a trial with hands that shook like he was a drunk suffering a near fatal attempt at sudden detox.

It took considerably longer for him to gather the papers in a pile, carry them downstairs and place them in the unlit fireplace in Azazel's study, and longer yet to devise a way to set them alight. It proved impossible to light a match or even operate an electronic lighter. But realising that, whilst his fingers and thumbs were currently impossible to manipulate effectively, he could lift and turn larger items well enough between the heels of his palms. So he knelt down and used his teeth to turn the knob on the stove to open the gas, used the heel of his right hand to depress the button that would light it and then carried a large, fat church candle from the hallway to the stove. Then he carefully transported the lit candle to the fireplace and set the document on fire.

As the proof of Sam's stupidity burned to charred black and curled into a smoking ruin, Dean smirked with satisfaction and not a little pride at his own ingenuity. Already, in such a small but significant way, he had managed to derail part of the Betas' plans. He wasn't sure why they had so blatantly wanted to lay the blame at Sam's door but he'd heard what Alastair had said about Azazel failing to 'corrupt' Sam sufficiently.

And whilst that didn't remove any of his fury that his supposedly clever little brother had allowed himself to be corrupted at all, it did make him doubly glad that Sam was now safely out of the Betas' influence.

What little he knew about Lucifer, the Grandé Alpha Primá of South America, made him seriously doubt the American Beta Government would have any chance to touch Sam whilst he was under Lucifer's protection.

So at least Sammy was safe there.

And, hopefully, by destroying the paperwork he had ensured that, eventually, Sam would be able to return to America without the Packs considering him a villain.

Which didn't mean Dean didn't intend to kick his ass for yet _another_ goddamned stupid betrayal.

But Sam's transgressions against Dean were _his_ business, not anybody else's. Dean was the only judge and jury that could acquit or condemn Sam for his actions. And even the All-Father himself could go swivel if he thought differently.

The smell of the burned paper was pungent enough to irritate his nose, which was the moment the penny dropped...

Smell.

His reaction to Castiel was going to be governed at least on a biological level by his own sense of smell.

So he needed some way of controlling that. Some way of neutralising or at least lessening the scent.

He was pretty sure, having seen Castiel in pictures,he was going to go a little (more) weak kneed when meeting him in the flesh regardless. The crucial thing though, for his own pride let alone as a way to scupper whatever 'evil' plan Alastair had been alluding to, was to somehow ensure he didn't do the whole drop to his knees and flash his Flores situation Alastair had so cruelly predicted.

Since he couldn't reasonably envisage a way of developing a severe cold or sinus infection in time to spare him from the prospect, Dean thought his best bet lay with menthol or lavender oil or something he could either topically apply or, better yet, shove up his nostrils for that initial meeting with the Primá.

And, of course, because he was going to Pierre rather than Detroit, he had no way of anticipating when that meeting with Castiel would actually take place so he didn't know when he would need it exactly and applying it himself would be problematical anyway.

The answer, he was sure, was lying on the floor of the living room where it had lain in the far corner since he'd thrown it there on Sam's birthday. The amulet was hollow and the slightly porous nature of its cast metal had already been adequately proven. If its contents could be replaced with a sufficiently concentrated solution of something highly pungent like eucalyptus oil, and Dean concentrated on trying to breathe through his mouth rather than his nose, perhaps he could meet the Primá without making a total idiot of himself.

Of course, the last thing he could do was go near the amulet and open it to remove the current contents, even if his hands were capable of doing so.

He needed someone else.

He needed a set of capable, trustworthy hands to solve his problem for him.

He needed Charlie.

All he had to do was figure out a way to contact her.

And even as he had the thought he wanted to slap himself on the head for not thinking of it earlier.

Just because Alastair thought communication depended on voice and hands alone, didn't make it true.

He'd already successfully used his mouth instead of his hands to turn on the stove.

He wasn't imagining it would be quick, easy or particularly legible, but if he used a wooden spoon so he had something substantial to bite down on and stuck to txt speak so he didn't have too many keys to hit with the other end of the spoon, he couldn't see why it shouldn't be possible to send Charlie an email.


	81. Chapter Seventy Seven

Charlie was sitting in class when her phone vibrated with the incoming message and, because she was desperately waiting for an update from Crowley, she slid the device out of her pocket, glanced secretively at her screen and then gasped so loudly that all attention was drawn to her illicit use of the phone in school.

"Hand it over, Miss Bradbury," her teacher snapped with annoyance. "You know the rules. You can get it back after your detention tonight."

Charlie barely heard him. Although Dean had just sent her a jumble of icons, it was pretty clear what he was trying to say. Dean was in trouble. Serious trouble. He clearly couldn't use his phone and didn't want her to call him back. He couldn't talk, so presumably wasn't alone. He needed her to go to him. Quickly. And he was hurt.

She jumped up, grabbing her bag. "I've got to go."

"Charlie Bradbury, sit right down and..." the teacher began to thunder.

"Sorry," she said, with a shrug, and ran out of the room.

As she left the school grounds at a fast trot, pacing herself as it was too far a distance to cover at full pelt, it occurred to her that the mute monkey icon might actually have been an instruction for her to tell nobody of her mission rather than saying Dean couldn't speak to her but, realistically she was hardly able to help Dean if he truly was in danger from someone. Anyone physically capable of hurting someone as big as Dean would be able to snap her in half with their little finger. So it had to mean that he couldn't speak out loud, not that she wasn't to get additional assistance.

Besides, Dean didn't know Crowley was in the city, did he? If Dean needed someone to race to his rescue, surely an Adult Alpha was better suited to the role.

Not that she had any intention of handing the problem over to Crowley to handle but she thought it was probably a case of two rescuers being better than one.

So even as she jogged towards Azazel's house, she fired a quick text to Crowley, asking for his assistance.

It took her almost twenty minutes to reach the house, sweaty and hot and so out of breath that she struggled to form a cohesive sentence when, half way up the path to the front door she was intercepted by a uniformed Deputy demanding to know her business.

Charlie didn't know what to do. She hadn't barely noticed the cop cars even as she'd run past them and now, faced with the reality of a Beta City policeman, she had absolutely no idea whether he was friend or foe. Realistically, if Dean was in trouble and there were cop cars parked outside his house, the cops were probably part of the problem, not the solution.

"I'm Dean's friend and I'm just...just here to visit him," she said, when she could catch her breath.

"Shouldn't you be in school?" the deputy demanded.

"I just want to say goodbye to him," she insisted.

"I'm afraid we have orders not to let anyone in," he told her, not unkindly.

Before she could reply, three officers burst out of the parked cars and came charging up the drive, ignoring her completely as they addressed the cop who'd stopped her.

"The Sheriff called, she said Al'asfar's done a bunk. We need to get in the house and check the Omegá's okay."

They raced to the front door and tried to enter.

"It's locked," one said, unnecessarily.

"No reply," another said, as his ringing of the door bell brought not response. "We're going to need to break in"

"I think I have a crow bar..."

"Maybe the window...."

"They're all barred..."

"Door's probably got a deadbolt though...."

As the four argued over the best way to do it, Charlie took advantage of the distraction to nip around to the back door, which was unlocked, and rolling her eyes at the ineptitude of Sioux Falls finest, she slipped into the house.

She found Dean sitting at the desk in his room and gasped in horror as he turned to look at her and she saw the vicious scar at his throat.

"Oh God, what happened, who did this to you? Is this why you couldn't call me? Are you alright? Why have you got a spoon in your mouth?"

Dean gestured impatiently at his computer monitor.

She ran over to the screen and saw what he had been painstakingly writing, one letter at a time, since the moment he'd managed to send the initial brief message to her.

She read it quickly, trying to decipher the message through the myriad of typos, distracted by the thumping on the front door as the cops attempted to break through the deadlock. Deciding Dean didn't have time for her to fall apart over what had happened to him, she concentrated on the immediate problem "Okay, so this is the horned thing, right? You need me to find it, wash it out...yeah...thoroughly...," she agreed as he tapped the word on the screen for emphasis, and fill it with Olbas oil?"

Dean nodded.

"Where's the oil?"

Dean pressed the keyboard with the spoon,

k..t..c...

"Kitchen?"

Dean nodded, even as they heard the front door give way. HE began to type with renewed urgency, but that just caused him to miss more keys than he hit.

D....S.....m...N...l...l.........

Dean snarled with frustration and pressed the poop icon instead.

Even in the circumstances, Charlie giggled appreciation of his ability to say "shit" effectively, but looking at the placement on the keyboard she thought she understood what he'd been trying to type.

"Sink? By the sink? No...okay...Under the Sink? Okay, got it."

"Are we playing charades, Red?" Crowley drawled from the doorway.

Dean lurched to his feet in panic, turning to face the small Alpha.

Crowley's first real life sight of Dean, therefore, was less than optimum, given there was a bowl of a wooden spoon bulging his cheeks out and its handle was distractingly pointing in Crowley's direction like a thin, long cock.

"Is that a new Omagáren fashion statement, squirrel, or are you just pleased to see me?" Crowley mocked lightly, though his eyes immediately flared with fury at the visible wound on Dean's threat.

Dean spat the spoon out in embarrassed anger, then snarled at his own impulsive action as he realised he had just effectively muted himself again. Given how long it had taken him to pick up and insert the spoon in the first place, he wasn't going to attempt it again in front of the strange, smirking Alpha.

"Don't mind Crowley," Charlie assured him. "He's an asshole but I'm pretty sure he's on our side. I'll just go do that...um...thing," she said, somewhat belying her own words by her refusal to include Crowley in the amulet plan.

As she slipped out of the room, and past the cops ascending the stairs, Crowley took his first real look at the "big as a horse" Omegá .

"Shit, squirrel, you are goddamned gorgeous. Please, please, PLEASE, forgive Castiel for being a bit of a dick and choose him anyway."

Dean blinked at him uncertainly.

"I'm one of his First Alphas," Crowley hastened to explain. "I know it's pretty crass and presumptuous of me, but I just wanted to put it out there that I'm fully used to being a discardable plaything and am more than available for any future abuse you'd like to inflict on me," he added shamelessly.

Possibly fortunately, Dean had absolutely no idea what the Alpha was talking about (though being told he was gorgeous by a Pack member was, admittedly, quite a relief).

He did, however, make a sudden, instinctive decision to trust the Alpha. He didn't know why, given that as one of Castiel's First Alphas he was probably the last person he should confide in. And yet, something about the sarcastic little Alpha called to him and he found himself responding.

He gestured impatiently to Crowley, motioning him to the screen and urging him to read what he'd written.

Crowley did so, a low rumbling growl starting in his throat and rising in volume until, as the four deputies stumbled through the door like the keystone cops, he turned and roared at them to get the fuck back out again at such a volume that they complied in a panic.

"I don't know what to think, Dean," he admitted, in a much softer voice once they had gone. "Clearly, the fact you've managed to write this proves you're still sane, so there's that at least. And, yes, no matter what I try to say to anyone, they are going to look at you and see 'Claire'. The Primáres are not always the most...um....receptive to external persuasion of the designations. Truth be told, they're all assholes really. Though Meg, that's Castiel's wife, is pretty good at slapping sense into him and getting him to listen. I believe, though, that the only designation truly capable of reasoning with a Primá in primal rage is an Omegá.

"The problem, really, is that seeing a physical wound that ugly on an Omegá is going to drive any Primá who sees it into the kind of nuclear fury that could take weeks to settle down. They aren't going to hang around and wait for an explanation before reacting. And once they have reacted, no explanation is ever going to be good enough. This Alastair guy really knew what he was doing by cutting your throat like that and removing your ability to use your voice to calm the situation. I think the only thing we can do is see if we can get Daniel to convince the Primáres to calm down before they actually see you. I think we probably need to get you into Daniel's private quarters and then hide you away for a bit. Maybe say you're refusing to come out.

"Nobody is allowed to make an Omegá do anything, after all.

"But, as soon as you're locked away, we then need to let them find out about the muting, and react to it and get it out of their systems first. And then we say, oh by the way it isn't quite as bad as you thought, after all. And maybe there's something that can be done about the scent thing before Castiel actually meets you. Well, hopefully both the scent things. The amulet's a good idea for now, but let's see if we can come up with something better, long term.

"But let's get you safely to Daniel first off and talk it through with him. Okay? "

Dean nodded his agreement.

"Right," Crowley said. "I think that explosion of female fury downstairs is the arrival of the good Sheriff Mills. Time for me to go downstairs and play big Pack asshole again. Hang tight, squirrel. We'll fix this. One way or the other."

~

Azazel had not expected to return home to a ticker tape parade. He had been set a task by his Primá and he had performed it to the best of his ability and he had completed it, if not to the letter of his instructions, at least to the spirit. He had done so out of loyalty to his Primá and his Pack and, though he knew few of the details of why he had needed to do the task he had been appointed, he had never questioned his orders nor fulfilled them out of any sense of personal aggrandisement. If he had performed any of his actions in a selfish light it had only been that he had sought the satisfaction of a job well done and the approval of Lucifer.

So he was disappointed, but not particularly surprised, that his return home was a low key affair in which his charge, still sedated, had been removed from his care as soon as they crossed through the guard-tower protected roadblock, with all its grim armed Alphas, which guarded the entrance into Lucifer's Rio Pack Land, and then Azazel was escorted not towards the Pack Hall but off in the completely opposite direction to a small, remote finca on the far most eastern edge of the high fence that enclosed the Pack Land border.

And there he had remained, isolated from his Pack and without a single, solitary visitor for over 24 hours.

It was, it must be admitted, something of an anticlimax after eighteen years in deep cover in American Beta Land.

The finca cottage was a small humble stone-hewed dwelling that was no more than a single combined living, kitchen and bedroom area with the addition of just a small, basic bathroom; though he reluctantly accepted it was comfortable enough despite its simplicity. There was food in the small kitchen area and a small television with adequate, if slightly snowy, reception of many varied channels running constant telenovelas to occupy his time; though he found it surprising how much he struggled with following his own language after spending so many years speaking, and thinking, only in American Inglais.

It was a complete culture shock, he supposed. He had become so used to an American lifestyle that returning to his roots was a surprisingly alien experience. In his youth he would have viewed the privacy of the cottage as such an enviable luxury he would have cared less for its utilitarian facilities. As an adult he saw its bare hewn stone walls and rustic hand made furniture as evidence of nothing more than poverty and deprivation.

The paucity of the accommodations provided reminded him forcefully of something he had perhaps deliberately chosen to forget. That inside his Pack Land he was not perceived as one of the esteemed rainbow group but merely a mid-ranked Beta with a completely uncertain future now his designated task had been completed. He was not an important man. He had simply been accorded an important job.

And now that job was done he had absolutely no idea what would happen to him next.

So he was considerably relieved on the second morning after his arrival when one of the Alpha Guard's jeeps pulled up to the cottage and disgorged his brother Alastair, whom he greeted with a hug of welcome.

"How did it go?" he asked, urgently, desperate for an update.

"I performed the necessary procedures successfully," Alastair confirmed, "then I left him to be discovered and made my way here by a slightly circuitous route so nobody tracking your mysterious brother 'Alastair Al'asfar' would identify this as my destination. I want no connection made between my actions in Sioux Falls and my identity as Alastair Lues."

"I thought you were going to Canada next, anyway." Azazel said, quizzically.

"I am," Alastair agreed, "but only for a short while. I still have a few tasks to complete in America as the government scientist, Dr Lues. So as soon as I've given Michael's operation a little bit of a 'jump start', I'll be returning to Nevada to keep my eye on the Betas there. They are getting precariously close to a breakthrough. I still can't believe they'll actually go through with it, but obviously we can't just sit and hope for the best."

"Not with people like Dick Roman poisoning peoples minds," Azazel agreed. "Though I've always wanted to imagine the average Beta, even buying into the Ablest bigotry like that, wouldn't be so easily convinced that the ends justified the means."

It is perhaps indicative of the problem he was complaining about that he totally failed to see the irony of his own words.

"I haven't seen anyone other than you since I arrived. Obviously I wasn't expecting to speak to Lucifer himself," he said, though his bitter tone suggested otherwise, "but I would have thought someone might have debriefed me by now."

"You moved things along so rapidly that there has had to be a certain level of reactive damage limitation and that is occupying most people's time," Alastair chided gently. "Ophriel is raging, threatening to raze Sioux Falls to the ground in three days and warning people they only have that long to vacate. Castiel is seemingly enroute to Pierre as we speak, presumably to assist in Ophriel's righteous revenge, and Jophiel's private plane took off three hours ago and, whilst Grandé's don't file flight plans, it looks highly likely from the reports of Air Traffic Contol that he is aiming for South Dakota too."

"So there will be a Major Conclave?" Azazel asked, excitedly. "Sam will be put on trial?"

"They're definitely howling for some justice," Alastair replied, with a shrug, "but before I tell you more, let's get get more comfortable, shall we? I stopped at duty free and bought you some of that brandy you particularly like. I thought we should celebrate your success before I have to catch my next flight. And I doubted anyone would think to provision you with anything palatable.

"Well, I must admit the kitchen here is poorly stocked with home comforts," Azazel grumbled, accepting the proffered gift and rummaging in the tiny kitchen area for glasses. "I'm sure it's 5 o'clock somewhere."

And Alastair smiled.

~


	82. Chapter Seventy Eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a part you might want to skip over, though it is only 'talking' about torture not the acutal performance of it. Just in case, I have marked the point you might want to jump to the end notes.

Azazel took barely two swallows of the brandy before his eyes rolled back in his head and his head slumped onto the table.

To understand why the brandy was so potently doctored with a fast-acting sedative and, indeed, why Alastair had encouraged his brother to drink it, let alone what happened next, it would probably behove us to consider what had happened to cause Alastair to visit at all.

Because Alastair was an accomplished liar, who deceived primarily by omission rather than fact, it might first be germaine to consider the 'circuitous' route he mentioned that he took to reach Rio. (Though, realistically, it should have occured to Azazel that a journey from South Dakota to Canada via _South America_ made absolutely no goddamned sense whatsoever, regardless of whether or not Alastair feared pursuit). The truth, though, was far more logical. Alastair had already arrived in Canada by the time he received the summons by Lucifer to come home and take care of some 'personal business'.

In view of the crucially important and time critical item he'd been carrying, he'd left South Dakota and flown immediately to Edmonton and had already been in Banff, eagerly at work, when the highly irritating and unfortunate matter was brought to his attention. So Alastair had been forced to drop everything, jump on a short-haul to Vancouver and then borrow Michael's personal jet to get down to Rio as quickly as possible.

But, perhaps, I should go back in time a little further before continuing with Azazel's story, since it was a couple of events that happened before Lucifers's call to Alastair that were truly of import.

~

Crowley did several things before loading Dean into his car and setting off for Pierre.

The first, naturally, involved a full blown argument with Sherrif Jody Mills. Although she was absolutely horrified that Dean had been attacked under 'her watch', she was responsible for getting Dean to Pierre herself and was loathe to let him out of her sight again. Plus, until Dean physically passed over a Pack Land border, he was officially still Beta 'property' and had no legal business entering Crowley's vehicle at all. Conversely, there was the point Crowley made, and Jody accepted, that Dean would feel a thousand times safer travelling with a Pack member than he would with any Free Beta under the circumstances.

"Not to mention a hell of a lot more comfortable," he pointed out, with the smugness of any small man with a very big, fast, expensive car.

In the end, Crowley had a moment of inspiration, phoned Castiel, and gave an extremely brief outline of the situation (naturally omitting the details of exactly what had been done to Dean and sufficing to say he'd been physically attacked by a Beta and was too shaken by the experience to remain in Beta custody a moment longer). Less than fifteen minutes later, Crowley's phone chirped receipt of the proof that his car's plates had been formally transferred into Castiel's direct personal ownership.

Crowley gestured to the car with an elaborate gesture. "The interior of this car is now officially declared to be Pack Land," he announced gleefully. "So if you'd like to escort Dean into the passenger seat, you may consider the sale complete. Oh, let's not forget the nominal fee..." He reached into his wallet, frowned at the well-padded contents, then handed over a $20 dollar bill as it was his smallest note. "Keep the change," he said airily.

Jody's mouth twitched with a smile as she pocketed the $1 dollar fee and 'change'.

"One thing," she said.

Crowley raised an eyebrow in query.

"Will he give it back to you?" she asked.

Crowley did a slight double-take, then frowned at his beloved, personalised $250,000 Bentley Bentayga.

"Son of a bitch," he growled.

He was still muttering under his breath about rotten, no-good, car-thieving, Primá bastards, when he returned to the house to let Dean know what he'd agreed. Crowley might have been born a Free Alpha but he had lived under Pack Land dictates for far too long to consider it was in any way acceptable to make abritrary decisions regarding the disposition of Omegáres. Whether Dean expected him to or not, Crowley had every intention of keeping Dean fully informed of what was happening and in consulting with him (to whatever extent it was possible) before making any decisions that directly affected him.

Two of those decisions couldn't be put off.

The first was what to do about Charlie.

"The problem," he explained, "isn't whether I could get permission from your Aunt to take you over the Border with us, Charlie. Your Aunt Pam struck me as a very... persuadable ...character and I have little doubt I could get her to sign the necessary documents. The question, Red, is whether you really want me to do it."

"Of course I want to go with Dean," she insisted angrily.

"As what?" he demanded bluntly. "His pet?"

She blinked.

"In fact, considering the way Primáres treat their Omegáres like little better than highly valuable pampered pets themselves, you'd effectively be a Pet's pet," he told her brutally. "Can't see you enjoying the lifestyle myself."

"Dean needs someone there to support him," she argued. "He needs a friend."

"He does," Crowley agreed easily. "A clever, _influential_ friend. A _respected_ friend. A friend who is regarded as a valuable Pack _asset_ , not an Omegá's pretty little living plushy. I hate being the one to break it to you but, in case you hadn't noticed, you're a female Beta. You think life is limited for you in Free Beta land without the money for an education? Try life in a Pack as a lone, female, uneducated Beta. There's only one single influential role in a Pack that a young Beta girl can realistically aspire to; that of the Primá's Beta Wife, and there aren't any vacancies for one of those in Castiel's Pack and it would be a bit pointless for you to win the position in any other Pack if Dean and Castiel genuinely _are_ truemates. Now, admittedly, since an Omegá can't be criticised or denied, Dean could choose to take you with him and keep you as his buddy pal and make everyone treat you like a Queen and, out of respect for _his_ position, they'd all do it. But that wouldn't make any of them listen to you, or respect you, or give any more heedance to your words than the yapping of an irritating little bitch-puppy."

"You're a bastard," Charlie snarled.

Crowley shrugged. "Better an honest bastard than a dishonest sycophant," he said. "Besides, I never said there wasn't a way to solve the problem."

"So, what are you suggesting?" she demanded.

"That you come back to Detroit with me and join Cain-Crowley as a paid intern. We'll put you through University, turn you into an asset in your own right. You're a smart pup, Charlie. You'll breeze through the training. You could learn how to use your skills to protect the rights of more than just _one_ Omegá. Cain-Crowley only employ Pack members, so by taking you on as an intern, we'd be inducting you into Castiel's Pack from day one. That would give you access to the Pack Hall. There would be nothing to prevent you visiting Dean frequently during your time at University. Well, always assuming Dean does agree to go live in Detroit with Castiel."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Then take the offer of the free education, get qualified and then hock yourself as a skilled Beta to whichever Pack he has ended up in. Either way, you get to be a First or Second Beta with a bit of genuine influence, rather than some unranked pet. And that's the kind of friend Dean's going to need, Red. One who can do more than just snarl on his behalf. You need to develop an actual _bite_!"

The second decision was possibly no less delicate a subject to negotiate.

So Crowley just charged in with his normal style of bull in a china shop.

"I've been thinking about it and I'm pretty sure we need to call Daniel and give him a heads up. Full disclosure," he said to Dean. "It can't wait until we actually arrive. For one thing, Castiel has probably already told Ophriel about you being 'attacked', and although I deliberately played it down - and let me tell you that when I say my ass will suffer for that, it's not merely hyperbole - well, Daniel is still going to hear about it and be worried. Even in _my_ car its going to take at least three hours to drive there, so that's a long time for Daniel to fret."

Dean nodded his agreement. Regardless of the consequences, he wasn't comfortable with the idea of causing Daniel avoidable distress.

"So, I suggest we get going right away and call Daniel from the car when we're about halfway there. That will give him time to tell Ophriel to get the ball rolling, but no time for Ophriel to call in any other Primáres before you're safely stashed away inside Daniel's apartment. Obviously, I need to do the talking so if there's anything you want me NOT to say, you need to tell me now whilst you can use the computer. And, just in case Daniel can't get you inside without you actually meeting Ophriel on the way, we need to find some kind of bandage or scarf to cover your throat. Even if Ophriel knows you are hurt, if he can't actually _see_ the wound I think his reaction will be far more controlled.

"And that leads me to the really awkward question that is going to be the first thing on everyone's minds the minute this gets out. I read what you said about this being planned by Azazel Al'asfar and performed by someone called Alastair that you believe was his brother."

Dean nodded.

"But the question I have to ask, Dean, is did your brother Sam know about this? Did he, in fact, give permission as your Alpha Guardian for it to be done?"

Dean met Crowley's eyes calmly, his expression carefully neutral, and deliberately and firmly shook his head in negation.

"You're absolutely sure?"

Dean nodded.

Crowley sighed with exagerrated relief.

"Thank fuck for that," he said. "That would have been a shit storm nobody would have wanted to get caught in the middle of. Lucifer would probably have been pissed as hell to think he'd invited a viper into his nest."

 

###

Skip to the end note, if you are of delicate disposition or believe all sinners deserve merciful forgiveness :)

###

Azazel woke to find he was lying naked on the bed in the cottage, though it had been stripped of all bedding so he was lying simply on an old stained mattress. His arms and legs had been strapped firmly to each of the carved wooden bedposts.

He was abruptly reminded of just how very remote the finca was. And, suddenly and sickeningly, he realised why he probably had been accommodated there instead of the Pack Hall. Lucifer had never intended to bring him back into the Pack.

HIs brother, Alastair, was busy laying out a number of sharp, shiny implements on the tiny kitchen table. None of which boded well for him.

"Why?" He croaked, his voice hoarse with the effects of whatever sedative Alastair had slipped into the brandy.

His brother looked up and eyed him sadly, though his voice was dispassionate as he replied.

"You shouldn't think of this as punishment, Azazel. It is simply a sad necessity to protect the Pack and the plan."

"I don't understand."

"We're not sure how it happened," Alastair explained, "but somehow the papers went missing. No one found any evidence of Sam's involvement in the muting. That leaves only you and I in the frame. Now, obviously ,someone has to face trial for what was done, or the American Primáres will never settle down and get on with what needs to be done.

"And, it can't be me because I am still so integral to the ongoing operations. So, sadly, if one of us has to take the fall, then it must be you, Azazel. The finger of blame can never be lain at Lucifer's feet because allowing anyone to see his hand in what has happened to the Omegá would inevitably link him to the development of the Alpha controlling drug. And that, as you know, must be perceived to be a Beta invention. It cannot become known that the drug was developed for Lucifer's use, lest the reason he requires it becomes known also. It is something the Betas themselves must accept as an acceptable solution for themselves, and to do so they must believe it was a shadowy section of their own government that actually created it.

"And how best to make them believe that than the Packs sincerely accusing them of doing so?"

"I understand," Azazel assured him sincerely. "I know what is at stake and I have always accepted that my life might be forfeit. You don't need to restrain me, Alastair. I do understand that, of the two of us, you are more critical than I. So if I must die to allow the plan to be successful, and in doing so I keep you safe, then I accept that. Please, though, at least give me the dignity of allowing me to do so as a man. Untie me and I swear I will stand for the bullet with honour."

Alastair's face screwed into an expression of regret. "Would that it could be so, brother. Sadly, the Mid Western Packs are demanding your return for trial in America. Lucifer tried to forestall them by saying he'd already become aware of your perfidy and the reason you missed your flight is that he had already subjected you to his own Pack discipline. Unfortunately, Lucifer is well known for applying his lessons at considerable length. It would be sincerely disbelieved if he were to claim he had simply had you executed.

"So Ophriel is of the belief you have most probably been tortured somewhat but that, so far, you are still inevitably alive enough to face his justice too. Clearly, it is imperative therefore that you are not only returned to South Dakota but you do so looking as though you've had an...interesting... couple of days in Lucifer's hands.

"And, of course, it's even more imperative that you are unable, under Primá compulsion, to betray our actions to the American Packs. So, unfortunately, it certainly seems that your life IS forfeit and all we can do at this stage is ensure you are the only member of our Pack to suffer the same fate."

"I'm your brother," Azazel reminded him furiously, his brave determination to face death not extending to the idea of suffering a torturous one.

"Which is exactly why Lucifer confided in me and allowed me the opportunity to come here and do this myself," Alastair assured him. "He wished to save me any unnecessary suffering in wondering whether it had been done humanely. Well, as humanely as possible under the circumstances. He has agreed that I may use whatever anaesthesia I choose for this first, unfortunate part of the process."

Alastair moved over to the bed and quickly and efficiently strapped a ball gag into Azazel's mouth. "Sorry about this. I like to think I'm a professional but I suspect even I am going to find it difficult enough without listening to you begging for a mercy that we both know I can't offer you."

"You see, it is critical you can't be forced to betray us, so at the very least your tongue would have to be removed and, obviously, your hands too. In view of what we did to Dean, it makes sense that Lucifer would inflict a punishment that aped his muting and the crippling of his hands, just as a matter of course. It is, as you know, what inevitably would have been done to Sam had the plan worked as intended and Dean would never have forgiven Castiel for allowing it to be done. So it probably would have taken several years for his biological need to reproduce to finally overcome his loathing of his legal mate enough for them to actually bond.

"Still, on the bright side, Lucifer now gets to unexpectedly keep Sam for a whole two years and that obviously works far better in that particular respect so he isn't quite as irritated with you as you imagine. And between you and me, I think Lucifer has a bit of a soft spot for Castiel and doesn't mind him getting a happy little true mate instead of a reluctant one, really, as long as it doesn't actually happen yet.

"So I think Lucifer would have been happy to just mute and cripple you, the way he would have punished Sam, and call it a day. He isn't feeling any particular urge to make a particular example of you for your mistakes.

"But it would cause unwanted suspicion if that was all that Lucifer did to an Omegá abuser who had fallen into his hands unexpectedly. It would be so out of character that it would inevitably draw attention. It's well known that his preferred method of dealing with Omegá abusers is to 'worm' them so, I'm afraid, I will have to go the whole hog.

"Lucifer's therefore asked me to perform a full worming procedure in view of the situation at Sioux Falls General, not to mention what happened to Dean on the night of Sam's party, since Lucifer feels he would probably have reacted to both of those scenarios too in the normal scheme of things.

"But, like I said, he has agreed I can do it under general anaesthetic so that's a considerable kindness."

Azazel's bowels loosened and he began to scream in horror behind the gag, his eyes rolling in panic as he struggled futilely against the restraints.

"I really am truly sorry, brother," Alastair said, nodding sympathetically, as he began to prepare the anaesthetic . "But, I'll make sure you're unconscious before I start cutting bits off.

"I'll start with the small things, like your eyelids and ears and lips, then move on to your tongue and genitals, and leave your legs and arms until last.

"And for authenticity, you really need to look like you've also been sitting on a pyramid for at least a day before we send you back, since 'worms' always spend a couple of days being opened up before being thrown into the pit. So Lucifer wants you delivered with a minimum of a number three peg inserted inside your ass, but he's given me permission to use muscle relaxants to ease the insertion. To be honest, simply shoving something that huge inside you without them would probably kill you anyway, since you haven't had a cock in your ass for twenty years and we haven't got time to work up to it, one size at a time.

"The good thing though is that the Americans are far less likely to keep you alive for years as a pit worm. They don't seem to have the stomach for that kind of thing. So I doubt you'll have to remain in this condition for long. I imagine they'll just put you on a pyramid to die and be done with you.

"Still, you'll probably be glad you've been pre-stretched so widely before they put you on it. A pyramid can take a whole week to kill you if you start with a tight ass and, naturally, I'd hate to think of you suffering that much. So doing this is definitely for the best, don't you think?"

~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Understanding that now Sam is out of the frame, 'someone' has to take the fall. Alastair decides to throw his brother to the wolves.  
> Azazel suffers some physical modification prior to being returned for trial. 
> 
> Maybe it costs a lot less to send a 'small' package internationally ;)


	83. Chapter Seventy Nine (part one)

"You said I'll be a paid intern, right?" Charlie asked, as Crowley put Dean's small suitcase in his trunk.

"Yes?" He replied, raising an eyebrow curiously.

"Can I have an advance?"

A second eyebrow joined the first.

Charlie chewed her lower lip uncertainty for a moment, then straightened her shoulders with resolve. "Look," she said. "You might think it's okay for Dean to go to Daniel in this condition and, yeah, I guess they probably have computers there so he won't be _totally_ unable to communicate but...well, it's not good enough, is it? Even if he's right that his hands are only temporarily affected, that fucker still told him it would take weeks before he's able even to hold a pen.

"So he needs a tablet or a laptop maybe. But I think a large screen tablet would be best.  If he's going to have to use his mouth, it's going to be easier for him to type on a touchscreen keyboard with a stylus than try to hold something big enough to press down on a proper keyboard. But a tablet would be lighter and easier to hold until his hands are stronger and, even when he can use his hands again, he'll still need something easily portable because I really think he needs to be able to communicate whenever he wants to, not when it's convenient for him to get to a PC. I don't have the money to buy one for him, but if you give me an advance, I swear I'll pay you back."

"You're clearly overestimating how much an intern gets paid," Crowley retorted waspishly.

He waited for her face to fall into bitter disappointment, then smirked. "I do however have a Cainson Pack Black credit card in my wallet and considering Castiel has possibly just stolen my favourite car, I feel no compunction whatsoever in spending some of his money on a few 'basic necessities'."

She was too relieved by his agreement to complain about him deliberately teasing her.

"Cool," she said. "I know just the place we should go."

Of course, it wasn't quite that easy.

Because Crowley's car was now formally 'Pack Land', the sheriff refused to let Charlie enter it without a passport, visa and written permission from her Aunt.

"You cannot be serious," Charlie groaned.

"Completely," Jody retorted. "You can't have it both ways. If getting in that car is crossing a border, then I can't allow YOU to do it. I will, however give you a lift to the store if you want to go with them, and then I'll drop you home afterwards, just to be safe." she turned to Crowley and added, "so I suggest you get the plates transferred back into your name before you return to Sioux Falls tomorrow, or Charlie isn't leaving with you."

Crowley grinned. "I like your style, Sheriff Mills," he said, stroking _his_ car fondly.

"Yeah?" she said. "Well I hope you remember that gratitude when the full fury of Ophriel inevitably comes crashing down on this City's population shortly. I might need a grateful friend in my corner."

It took the best part of an hour to drive to the store, choose a tablet light enough for Dean to hold but big enough that the electronic keyboard was large enough for him to use effectively. Crowley made a point of picking up a half dozen spare styluses  "In case you're a biter, Squirrel. You definitely look like a biter to me," and a couple of extra USB charger cables.  They could set the tablet up to charge itself in the car, he pointed out, so it would be useable for Dean's reunion with Daniel.

Half an hour out of Sioux Falls, after a long contemplative silence due to Crowley’s need to recover from the awkwardly emotional scene of a tearful Charlie Bradbury bidding a temporary farewell to Dean, performed with much dramatic wailing and gnashing of teeth despite Crowley trying to hurry it along by pointing out he'd be back to pick her up the next day for the drive to Detroit and didn't she think she ought to go pack her case or something, Crowley said, "So what do you already know about Pack Life?"

Dean turned enough in the passenger seat to roll his eyes pointedly at the Alpha and gesture helplessly with his hands at the still charging tablet.

'Oops', Crowley thought. Though he decided it would be too embarrassing to admit he'd temporarily forgotten Dean couldn't talk, so decided to simply bluster through the situation instead. "It was rhetorical," he continued smoothly. "I'm just thinking aloud. Every other non-Pack born Omegá I've met has come in straight from an auction and they usually arrive thinking they're on their way to some kind of terrible hellhole that, somehow, could actually be _worse_ than a rut house. But I guess, since you've already met Daniel you already know that isn't true."

Dean see-sawed his left hand, trying to indicate uncertainty.

"Ah," Crowley said. "Jury still out then?"

Dean nodded.

Crowley paused for a few moments, gathering his thoughts.

"I'm Free Born," he said. "I presented so early and quickly that I didn't even suffer rut rage really. I think it's because I actually presented as an Alpha before I even reached puberty, so by the time I stopped speaking like I was sucking on helium and dropped my balls, I'd already grown an Alpha dick. Comes as a side effect of being short, apparently. I guess in primal times a guy like me wouldn't have survived to adulthood if they didn't gain full Alpha strength pretty damned quickly.

"I suspect that's one of the reasons I've always been considered the best Alpha to handle skittish Omegáres. I don't have a rut house history. I'm not claiming to be an Omegá virgin, you understand, but I’ve never been in one of _those_ places," he clarified. “They weren’t the done thing back then anyway, to be honest. It's only been in the last twenty years or so that the Free Betas have really become so casually indifferent to the harm they inflict on Omagáres simply to protect themselves from the 'Alpha threat'.

Dean nodded his understanding of the difference. Bobby had said something similar and whilst Crowley definitely looked a bit younger than Bobby had, Dean knew his appearance probably put him nearer seventy or eighty than the forty-ish he appeared to be. He realised that Crowley was probably not _that_ much younger than Daniel, in that case, so he had probably got a lot of experience worth listening to. Dean was pretty certain that it was his own ignorance that was going to cause him the most problems in Pack Land. Any insider knowledge he could glean from Crowley might prove invaluable.

"Anyway, I'm only mentioning that because I admit the first time I entered a Pack Land it was a complete mind fuck. It's not what you expect. It's both better and worse. Packs are...well, they're different. It’s kind of like visiting an alien planet, you know? One where people are just pretending to be human. Where everyone looks human and acts human and even, on the surface, aren't really that different to the norm. But there's this underlying vibe of everything being a bit 'off'. Like it's all just a thin veneer that could crack at any moment and reveal something...other… lurking under everyone’s skins.

“I know that’s like something out of a Sci-Fi horror flick where everyone’s secretly a lizard or something,” he chuckled. “But despite the unfortunate imagery, it’s still the most apt comparison I can think of. That the Packs are all at heart an environment of raw, animalistic brutality with just a thin coating of civilization gilding over the reality.

“And I know that sounds like something awful and scary, but, once you get over your initial reactions to the oddities you encounter, you’ll probably find it peculiarly liberating. I certainly did. It’s honest, you see. There’s nothing fake or artificial about Pack Life. You very quickly know where you stand and, if you are clever and resourceful, Squirrel, where _you_ could easily stand is right at the top of the totem pole. Or, of course, you could fuck it up, like most Omegáres do, and end up being nothing more than a pretty pet for the rest of your life.

"So you've got to throw away any preconceived ideas you've developed from tabloid bullshit and Free Beta propaganda because I can guarantee that whatever you think you know about the Packs is almost certainly wrong. And then there's the Omegá conundrum, that whole dichotomy between you being considered the highest holy to be worshipped and yet apt to be treated like some airhead bimbo."

The Alpha paused for thought and just drove in silence for several minutes until Dean demanded his attention by slapping the dashboard, then gesturing impatiently for Crowley to continue talking.

Crowley wrinkled his nose. He was more used to conversations than monologues, usually using the input of his companion to give him time to contemplate his own next words. Without Dean's verbal input, he was finding it difficult to keep the conversation flowing.

"Okay, so let’s talk about the Omagáres. You've only met Daniel and you have to understand that he is not a...typical Omegá. He's probably the closest you will come to what an Omegá is probably _meant_ to be like, mind you, but he's pretty unique. Comes of him being Pack born and old as fuck, I guess. He missed out on most of the bullshit that's screwed up all the younger ones.

"Daniel is a real class-act. A real Boss. He understands the power of his own beauty and he uses it like a weapon but he never makes the mistake of using it to portray himself as a sexual ‘object’. It's hard to describe, really, but he has this whole 'look, desire, worship but don't even imagine you can touchme, you worthless piece of scum' act going on.

“I’m not saying he isn’t just as sexually charged as any other Omegá but that, somehow, when he fucks someone he makes sure they know beyond doubt they are being accorded an honour they aren’t worthy of. On the extremely rare occasions these days that Daniel deigns to sit on a First Alpha’s cock, he makes it abundantly clear that it is for _his_ pleasure, not theirs. And they love it, Dean. For all we Alphas primp and preen and stalk around pissing in corners like top dogs, I think we’re all a bit masochistic at heart. There’s nothing quite as satisfying to us as being the object of that kind of sexual abuse.

“It’s probably a biological thing. Considering that Alphas, who are proud men, have to be prepared to be bent over by their Primáres, I guess it makes perfect sense that being sexually dominated is actually a real turn on for most Alphas.

“Daniel seems to understand that instinctively. He makes Ophriel’s First Alphas crawl after him like  
sad abandoned puppy dogs just begging for one more scrap of his attention.

"Then there's Chuck, obviously, who is also pretty unique though in a completely different way to Daniel. They're polar opposites in a lot of ways. Chuck goes more for trying to look like a Beta. Dresses himself down completely and hates being seen as an object of desire at all. He is the only Omegá I know who doesn’t have an overdeveloped sex drive. Which is completely bizarre when you consider he's the one who encourages all the younger Omegáres to act like airheaded sluts."

Dean choked in surprise, spluttering loudly enough that Crowley shrugged nonchalantly. "Just calling it how I see it, Squirrel. Just wait ‘til you meet his personal protégé, Joshua, and you'll see what I mean. Joshua is, hands down, the prettiest little wet dream I've ever met but he's just this kind of walking sex doll. Never wears a shred of clothing, just prances around stark naked, and uses Jophiel's First Alphas as mobile peg seating.”

"Seriously," Crowley assured him, when Dean looked at him in disbelief. "Joshua never uses a bridle. He only keeps his cunt pegged so his Flores stays open, and he always has at least one of Jophiel's First Alphas constantly trailing after him like a lapdog in case he wants to sit down. Only it’s _their_ laps that get sat on, obviously. Poor lucky bastards. I think that's why Jophiel has to have twelve of them, so they get some recovery time after having Joshua sitting on their laps all day and then Jophiel reaming their asses all night in jealous revenge."

Crowley noticed the look of complete bewildered shock on Dean’s face and realised he needed to back-track a bit.

“Sorry, Squirrel. I’m so used to Pack Life now that I keep forgetting just how weird the Free Betas are about sex. I guess all that puritanical moralistic bullshit derives from the lower sex drive of most Betas. They probably figure that if _they_ aren’t getting any, then no-one should! Still, it’s a difficult subject to raise to a Free born Omegá because victims of sexual abuse are hardly going to jump in the air and wave their arms in joy at the idea of joining a society that considers sex just a damned good form of recreational fun. No-one Pack born can even envisage why the Free Betas have the idea that sex should be a private affair and the concept of sex being something embarrassing just makes no sense to them whatsoever.

“The usual problem with new Omegáres is convincing them that it’s actually okay that they like sex and that no-one in a Pack is going to judge them for their enthusiasm for it. ‘Course, that wasn’t strictly true a few years ago. A few too many of the Primáres had gotten it into their heads that they ‘owned’ their brides’ Flores and got all possessive about them. Not all of them, of course. I think Daniel would literally have castrated Ophriel if he had ever tried shit like that.

“But far too many of the Primáres had definitely forgotten who was really the Top Dog of their Pack. If you have nothing else to thank Chuck for, thank him at least for kicking enough Primá asses to throw the idea that an Omegáren Flores could be ‘owned’ by anyone other than an Omegá back in the cess pit where it belonged.

“So the Packs are getting back to the idea that it isn’t just okay for Alphas and Betas to get it on whenever they want to, but Omegáres are back in the fun park too. The Primáres are ‘adjusting’ to the idea. They can’t criticise their Brides, after all, and the only thing they can do to the Alphas who have ‘cuckolded’ them is fuck them in return and that means the Primá pheromones get spread throughout the pack when the Alphas go off and fuck someone else and, basically, it’s all happy days.

“But what’s kind of important out of all this shit is that regardless of whether you decide to fuck everything that moves or be a stingy-assed monk, whatever you do, Squirrel, don’t be a Joshua. I’m not talking about how he _behaves_. I’m talking about how he lets people perceive that behaviour. The fucking is fine. Actually, the fucking is bloody brilliant. The Southern Packs are the strongest they have been in a millennium because Joshua’s greedy little ass is driving Jophiel so insane that he is fucking any Alpha who even sniffs in Joshua’s direction. There isn’t a member of the Southern Packs who isn’t so infused with Pack pheromones that you can practically smell them coming out of their pores.

“That’s the good bit. The bad bit is that everyone is thinking it’s because Joshua is just an insatiable slut without a single thought in his head except sex. Actually, come to think of it, that’s probably _true_ in his case. But the important thing is that whilst everyone pats him on the head fondly and thinks he is cute as hell, I guarantee no-one in Jophiel’s pack ever asks his _opinion_ on anything.

“That’s why its so important that it’s Daniel who is going to be your mentor in this rather than Chuck. Although you’re going to have to find your own way, Dean, and make your own choices about who you ultimately want to be, I don’t think you can go far wrong by basing your behaviour on Daniel’s. It’s a real blessing that you ended up in South Dakota of all places. Fate must have been smiling on you at least a little, because I can’t think of another American Omegá who could possibly be a better role model for you. “

~~


	84. Chapter Seventy Nine (part two)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the rest of the chapter! I've posted it separately rather than simply adding it to the last one to stop anyone accidentally missing it.

Although it's possible that Ophriel's First Alphas might have had a different impression of the approachability of their own personal 'goddess', Daniel considered himself a pretty laid back kind of guy. Of course, it was easy to remain even-tempered when no one ever opposed your wishes. It had been decades since anyone had even dreamed of telling Daniel what he could or couldn't do.

He had chosen his Primá well.

Ophriel worshipped him and it wasn't a greedy, possessive adoration such as Jophiel displayed towards Joshua. It was a genuine, almost religious reverence wherein Ophriel, though passionately attracted to Daniel on a purely human level, never forgot that his mate was a fleshly representation of the Omadonna himself.

Ophriel was a genuinely religious man.

Not in the hypocritical way of men who professed to be religious but at a fundamental, soul-deep level that infused his being and drove his every thought and action. It was Ophriel's genuine piety that had won him the hand of the most desired Omegá of Daniel's generation despite his own lack of power or money at the time of their mating. And although a less charitable person might suggest that the power and wealth he had eventually attained as a direct result of that mating could have been the true reason for his ardent pursuit of Daniel, that person would be absolutely wrong.

Ophriel’s sole reason for pursuing a position of influence had been his desire to accord Daniel a worthy lifestyle and a secure future.

The proof of which was that he had written a careful, legally unbreakable, will to ensure that in the event of his own untimely demise, the only way any of his Primá offspring might inherit even one cent of his fortune was by signing an ironclad guarantee that Daniel would remain in Pierre as a Dowager Omegá, still feted and honoured for the rest of his life.

To an external, non-Pack person, Ophriel did not, admittedly, strike anyone as a man to whom the adjective 'pious' would necessarily jump to the forefront of their minds. The words most often used to describe him by the South Dakotan Free Betas were ‘cruel, harsh, stern, forbidding, proud, humourless and savage’.

It probably would surprise any of those Betas that on being advised by Daniel that Dean had apparently been 'muted', most probably as a direct consequence of the removal of Sam's protective guardianship by their own well-meaning interference, that Ophriel's first reaction (well, after his initial blue-eyed roar of outrage, naturally) was to drop to his knees, bury his face in Daniel's 'altar' and weep.

And there he remained for several long, interminable minutes, sobbing against the flesh of Daniel's mound like a small inconsolable pup, while Daniel stroked his head in both comfort and benediction.

There was nothing sexual about the press of his mouth against Daniel's most intimate flesh. It was the sorrowful apology of a mortal man to his goddess for his own frailty and failure.

And when those minutes had passed and Ophriel dragged himself back to his feet, it was with a sense of a man who had been freshly infused with the strength of divine conviction. The look on his face when his tears had been spent and his goddess had so graciously accepted his apology was one that the Free Betas would have recognised and fled from in terror.

"It will burn," Ophriel growled. "No Omegá will ever be harmed in that place again because I will raze it to the ground and poison the water and sow the fields with salt. Let the burned, barren remains of Sioux Falls stand as an infertile scar, for all time, as a silent promise that the Packs will stand no more for the desecration of the Omadonna's chosen."

~

And three days, exactly, from the moment that Dean finally crossed the border into the Pierre Pack Land, that is what Ophriel did.

The Pack owned water treatment plants were turned off. Dozens upon dozens of trucks carrying rock salt dumped their contents into the reservoirs and lakes and ponds and rivers. The Falls after which Sioux Falls were named were turned into brine. The crops in the fields were burned and salt was poured liberally on the smoking ground, ensuring that nothing would grow again in that soil for generations.

Every tree in every park was hewn and transported to the city limits, then piled into a huge circular barricade that was twenty feet deep and the same high, and the gasoline was emptied from all the Pack owned depositories and transported to the barricade and poured over the green wood so that it would ignite in fury when the three day deadline for evacuation ticked down to the moment of lighting. Five further dumps of gasoline were deposited at strategic points within the City, to ensure the flames never lost their momentum as they spread inwards to devour the buildings encircled by the flaming wall.

Ten hours before ignition of the barricade, the five City Council members who had failed to successfully flee before they were called to answer for the events at Falls Park on Shab-e Yalda, were shackled naked by both ankles to metal stakes fastened inside each of the five gasoline dumps. Then they were provided with a small bone saw each and left there, with the choice of whether or not they wished to ‘escape’ the oncoming inferno.

Six hours before ignition, at the request of Daniel and Dean to ensure no ‘innocents’ perished in the flames, a virtual army of Alphas (most of whom had flown down from the confederacy, supposedly to form an escort guard for Raphael who had demanded to be part of the Major Conclave) entered the almost abandoned City, breaking down doors and tramping through the detritus left by an entire City’s population fleeing in sheer terror, and located and retrieved every feathered, furred or finned occupant that had been cruelly abandoned by their owners.

Three hours before ignition, (by which time Pierre’s Pack Lands had acquired a somewhat problematical number of new pets including, bizarrely an Alligator, two monkeys and even a toothless ancient mountain lion that had been living in someone’s basement) Sheriff Jody Mills, who was one of the few remaining law enforcers still helping stragglers out of the city, was silently handed a small package by an unfamiliar, unruffled, formally suited Alpha Lawyer whose sudden appearance was so bizarre in the scene of otherwise panicked half-dressed havoc that he seemed more mirage than real.

Inside the small box was a set of unfamiliar house keys on a Bentley keyring and a letter from the Pierre City PD advising her that her ‘request’ for transfer to employment in their district had been approved.

One hour before ignition, a legal delegation arrived from Washington DC demanding that the Packs reversed their decision and offered a merciful reprieve to the residents.

It was Castiel, who liked to consider himself a fair man, who reminded them that under Pack Law, any advocate for the guilty was judged equally guilty so perhaps they would like to get back in their helicopter and fly home whilst they still could.

All but two of the delegation of lawyers were smart enough to comply.

The other two joined the councillors at the fuel dumps.

Interestingly, only one of those had taken advantage of the bone saw and was dragging himself by his hands down the street, his slow torturous journey towards the barricade marked by a snail-trail of blood.

With half an hour and two miles to go, it seemed improbable he would make it.

The Alphas dropping off the two government lawyers just shrugged, stepped over him and left his fate to the All-Father.

Then, at the appointed hour, the last final gap in the barricade was closed with the dumping of a final load of timber, the flames were lit and Sioux Falls began to burn.

And it is inevitably, when considering the fate of that tiny City in South Dakota and the consequences that arose from its destruction, possible to say that THAT was the trigger event that caused everything that followed.

Or, perhaps, to say that it was the muting of Dean that was the trigger and that the razing of Sioux Falls was simply the first domino to fall.

But neither would really be true.

Because the Beta plan had been in development for three hundred years. It would have always culminated in the same outcome, _eventually_.

The only difference made by the muting of Dean and the burning of Sioux Falls is that it changed the timing of what followed. It made the Betas act faster. It made them a little less cautious. A little more careless.

And that, perhaps, is why Lucifer is remembered by history as a ‘good guy’.

But I’ve raced ahead of myself again.

Perhaps it would be helpful to know a little more detail of what happened in the three days between Ophriel saying he would burn Sioux Falls and the moment he actually lit the match.


	85. Chapter Eighty

Not long after they passed a road sign declaring it was just sixty more miles to Pierre, the tablet beeped to indicate it was completely charged. Dean reached for it with considerable eagerness. Although Crowley had done a surprisingly good job of answering so many of Dean's unasked questions, the journey had still emphasised just how helpless he felt without the ability to communicate whatsoever. He didn't even have enough control of his hands to successfully offer anyone the finger.

Neither, it turned out, did he have much chance of getting the tablet up and running any time soon as the damned thing was demanding he set up accounts and apps and settings and all the normal shit that was irritating at the best of times. He chucked the demonic piece of crap back down onto his lap in frustration when it proved virtually impossible to attempt to even set his time and location in a moving car whilst holding it with tremulous hands and stabbing at it with a stylus.

Crowley noticed his problem, immediately pulled over to the side of the road, let the engine switch itself into idle and then proceeded to set the device up for Dean to use. After about twenty minutes of fiddling with the tablet, he handed it over.

"I'm pretty sure they have decent broadband at the Pack Hall," he said, "but I don't ever want you to be unable to contact someone in an emergency, so I've loaded you with an unlimited use 4g SIM card too on Cain-Crowley's account. I've set up the instant messaging on your Skype app, and added myself, Charlie and Meg as contacts already. You don't know Meg yet, but she's kickass and she is absolutely, hands down, the biggest fan you have in the Packs already, so don't hesitate to contact her if you need help and can't get hold of me for whatever reason."

Dean nodded his understanding, then experimentally tried to see whether he could open an app with his fingers. It was rapidly apparent that he wasn't even capable of enough dexterity to simply press an app icon. So he gratefully accepted the stylus Crowley handed back to him and, after a couple of fumbling attempts managed to raise it close enough to his mouth to grasp it firmly with his teeth.

He quickly realised it wasn't that much easier to use than the spoon had been, but on the positive side it was considerably more comfortable in his mouth and he could see how, with practice, he would eventually be able to type much faster on the touchscreen keyboard than he had on the PC keyboard.

Charlie had explained to him in the store how to use the text-to-speech function embedded in the device, so he would even have an audible 'voice', but it would only be practical to use if he could manage to type the words for the device to speak in the first place.

It took him several minutes of concentrated effort but he grinned hugely when he finally managed to 'say' thank you to Crowley for the tablet.

Admittedly it was made considerably easier by the device's auto-complete function.

"You're welcome," Crowley said, putting the car back into drive and easing back into the traffic.

For the next hour, as Crowley drove, Dean concentrated on painstakingly writing a dozen different general use phrases, such as "Yes", "No,", Hello", "Goodbye" and "What is your name?". He figured that if he had basic stuff like that pre-loaded into a document, ready to 'say' with just a touch of the stylus, it would be considerably easier and faster to converse.

Then, after a moment's reflection, he added "Fuck you", "Fuck off", "Shit" and “Bullshit”, figuring they would all probably turn out to be commonly needed comments too.

He then drew a blank on what other words or phrases might prove particularly useful but he supposed he'd just have to add them as he went along. It was probably too early to know yet whether phrases like "No, I don't want to sit on your lap, asshole," were going to be needed at all.

"Daniel's going to meet us at the border gate," Crowley said, "and he's going to attempt to whisk you straight into his apartment. There are permanent Alpha guards stationed outside his quarters, for his safety and to ensure his privacy, mind you, so don’t imagine he’s being kept prisoner or anything when you see them. Think of them as guard dogs rather than ‘guards’. Even Ophriel doesn't enter Daniel’s private rooms without waiting outside every time for specific permission to enter. But just in case you do bump into Ophriel on the way, I guess I need to warn you he's likely to greet you the traditional way."

# I don't understand # Dean typed laboriously, and then saved that statement to his list of probably most needed phrases for the immediate future.

"You've probably come across the phrase 'Altar' to describe an Omegá's mound. It's used a lot in scripture."

# Yes #

"Yes, well, Primáres take the All-Father's instruction to offer worship at the Altar of the Omadonna seriously. The traditional, formal greeting of a Primá to an Omegá is for him to kneel at your feet and kiss your crotch."

Dean stared down at his tablet, deciding he needed to add "What the fuck?" to his list of necessary statements.

"It's genuinely non-sexual and totally an act of respect," Crowley continued, "But tends to take new Omagáres so much by surprise that they either squeal and back away in shock or immediately drop to their hands and knees thinking they've gotten lucky. I personally suggest, if it happens, you go the indifferent route. You're not even obliged to acknowledge it happening really, except for tapping their heads or shoulders to give them permission to rise again, so if I were you I'd play it cool like any Primá you meet is beneath contempt anyway."

# What does Daniel do? # Dean asked, taking the time to type it carefully, as he imagined it would be another useful phrase to keep.

Crowley chuckled a little wickedly. "Well, if it's Ophriel, he usually makes him grovel on his knees for an almost embarrassing amount of time before allowing him to rise again. It’s a bit of a ‘thing’ between them. I guess, in their case it IS a bit sexual. With any other Primá he does this kind of brief backwards sweeping motion with his hand that is half-way between patting their heads like pleasing puppies and half a sort of rude gesture brushing off an unwanted minor irritation."

# Alphas too? #

"No, it's just a thing between Primáres and Omagáres," Crowley clarified. "Besides, any Alpha other than your mate's First Alphas would never dare touch you in any way and even they would only do so if you specifically granted permission. Even Jophiel's Alphas who stagger around with cocks literally rubbed raw by Joshua never, ever, take his previous permission as any indication any further contact would be welcomed. In a Pack, an Alpha has to be given specific permission each and every time they touch an Omegá. There's no such thing as implied consent where Omegáres are concerned. In fact, the same is true, really, about Primáres touching Omagáres sexually even when they are mated. But, as I said, the kissing of your Altar isn't considered sexual. Think of it more like a 'hand shake'."

Dean snorted.

Crowley shrugged and grinned. "Yeah," he agreed. "If it was a more common form of greeting between the other designations, it would make business meetings a lot more interesting. The important, salient point though is that Primáres do it on their knees. There's a big fat clue there as to who is supposed to be Top Dog but, somehow, over the centuries although the formal greeting has remained, it's become more of a traditional ritual than a sincere submission by the Primá to the Omegá. That's why Daniel is so careful, when greeted by strange Primáres, to act like a queen accepting due worship. Joshua is more apt to wriggle his hips and giggle."

# Don't be a Joshua? # Dean grinned wryly at the Alpha.

"Word," Crowley agreed sincerely.

# Thank you #

"My pleasure," Crowley said. "In fact, anything you want will always be my pleasure. Particularly if it involves me being used disgracefully. Feel free to sexually humiliate me at your leisure. Just saying. Just putting it out there." He wriggled his eyebrows meaningfully.

Dean wondered whether he should be offended but decided, actually, he was pretty flattered and amused.

But also a bit confused.

# Can an unmated Omegá even do that? #

Crowley pursed his lips in thought, dropping his cheeky grin for a more serious mien. “That’s difficult to answer. I guess, strictly speaking, an Omegá can do whatever the hell he wants to do since he’s ‘beyond reproach’. But, realistically, it would break a whole lot of Pack taboos if an Omegá did do that. It’s traditional in a Pack for an Omegá to enter his marriage as a virgin. It’s one of the main issues the Packs have with modern Free Beta society and, now virgin Omegáres are so rare, that’s why the bride price of a virgin Omegá is so astronomical that I doubt anyone other than a Grandé is ever going to be able to buy one from now on.

“Obviously, most of the Omegáres arriving into Pack Land these days aren’t anything close to virginal but the old tradition remains that they only let their mate’s First Alphas mount them, and that’s obviously only after they have formally mated. It’s all about Pack cohesion and pheromone distribution so it makes perfect sense in practice but, scripturally, I guess it isn’t a ‘tenet’. It’s more a societal rule. I don’t know how a Primá would react to an Omegá who flouted convention in that way, since it’s never happened, but I don’t imagine it would be positively.”

Dean thought about his answer for a long time, then decided he needed to add “Fuck ‘em” to his list of stock phrases.

He suddenly had absolutely no idea of how Daniel hadn’t gone batshit insane trying to navigate the fucked up shit that ruled his day to day life. Dean had, stupidly, imagined that the Packs had got a handle on stuff, that they did things ‘right’. But the more Crowley explained to him, the more confident Dean was becoming that the Packs were just as screwed up as the Free Beta society in their own way.

And he definitely wanted to say a huge FUCK YOU to the Primáres.

As far as he could tell, it was their fault the life of an Omegá was like a minefield even inside a Pack.

Because, it seemed they wanted a virgin bride. They wanted to dictate what an Omegá did with his own body. They thought they had the right to tell an Omegá what he could or couldn’t do. And if an Omegá stepped out of line, dared to break a taboo, the Primáres cast their judgement on them and considered them ‘unworthy’ or some such shit. Come to think of it, they even victim blamed an Omegá for losing his ‘virginity’ to rape. It was bad enough they thought they had the right to tell an Omegá he should choose to be chaste before marriage, but it was fucking obscene that they thought they were entitled to cast judgement on an Omegá who had been breached against his will.

Especially when, if you really thought about it, any Omegá who’d had an Alpha cock in their ass, regardless of why, was still strictly-speaking a ‘virgin’ anyway. It wasn’t as though an Alpha fucked an Omegá’s cunt. An Alpha couldn’t impregnate an Omegá. Whatever societal imperatives ever existed to justify a preference for ‘virgin’ brides could only, surely, be possibly justified by the need of a man to know he wasn’t potentially raising another man’s pup. And even that was a bit of an asshole move since a pup was a blessing and a joy to anyone, so did it really matter who the Sire was?

So it was all about Primá pride.

Fucking dicks, the lot of them.

Dean was so pissed he was tempted to tell Crowley to pull the car over and let him sit on his lap.

It would be worth it just to see the look on Crowley’s face.

Besides, Dean was actually genuinely intrigued to know how it felt to actually choose to have sex rather than be drugged and raped.

He wondered whether it was weird or odd that instead of being put off sex forever by his experiences, he was actually more interested in knowing whether it would feel different when he had some agency in the situation. Was that an Omegá thing? Was the urge to procreate so strong that he was inured to suffering normal psychological reactions to abuse? Or was the fact he was even asking himself the question proof in itself that he was still a round peg trying to squeeze himself into a square hole?

Maybe he was essentially no different from any rut-house Omegá, casting judgement on himself for not adhering to a Beta moralistic code, thinking there must be something ‘wrong’ with him for not reacting like a Beta woman would in the same circumstances when the truth was plain that he was NOT a Beta female, he was an Omegá, a totally different species for whom morality was considerably more fluid.

And wasn’t he, as an Omegá, supposed to be beyond reproach? Unaccountable? Which meant he didn’t even have to justify his feelings or his reactions to himself, let alone any fucking dickhead Primá.

So although he didn’t tell Crowley to stop the car, it wasn’t because he didn’t want to do it. It wasn’t even because of some arbitrary rules that said he shouldn’t do it.

It was only because he didn’t feel brave enough to do it now he had so little control over his Flores.

And that pissed him off.

That the muting had taken away his ability to be in control of any penetration and he wasn’t willing to experiment with his own body without being in total control.

Still, maybe, not now but on some future occasion, perhaps he would make the decision to turn convention on its head with the little Alpha, regardless of what any damned Primá imagined was ‘proper’ behaviour for an Omegá.

So he sat and slowly typed a new question.

# So this being sexual dominated turning you on idea you mentioned. Tell me. Does it include the idea of you being in full bondage? #

And it was pretty satisfying that Crowley yelped with shock and nearly crashed the car.

~

“So,” Meg said cautiously, as she packed a case for them. “How come I get to go with you? I thought Beta Wives weren’t invited to Conclaves. Well, except for Colette, of course.”

She was speaking carefully because Castiel had been struggling with his temper since Ophriel’s phonecall and because of his blue eyes it was difficult to judge the moment when he might suddenly snap into rage. Although there was a difference between the blue phosphorous glow of Primá rage and the normal hue of Castiel’s eyes, it wasn’t sufficiently dissimilar to see the first normal warning flares sparking around his irises the same way as it would be in a dark eyed Primá.

“The reason Colette gets invited is she is the wife of a Grandé, not just a Primá. As are you, Meg. You have absolutely the same status as my Beta mother. But anyway, Ophriel hasn’t called a Conclave at all, really. A Primá can’t demand a Conclave. That’s only in the gift of a Grandé Alpha Primá. Ophriel’s called for a _Major_ _Conclave_.”

She blinked uncertainly. “Isn’t that just a bigger conclave?”

Castiel chuckled. “It’s a lazy colloquialism that certainly implies that, I guess. And, it’s certainly more _important._ The traditional name is a Majeure, not a Major, and the totally correct term is a Force Majeure Conclave, where circumstances have occurred so out of the norm that the situation is considered to be beyond a mere mortal to pass judgement alone. So a Primá requires the supporting judgements of any available Omegá Queens. Ophriel is effectively saying that the situation is so dire in his opinion that the goddess himself should be consulted. Ophriel has put out a call for some Primáres with Omegá brides to attend to the trial and, unlike the more traditional Primá Conclave such as the one we had here in Detroit, the Omegáres won't simply sit in silent judgement. They will be placed front and centre and offered an opportunity to pass the ultimate final judgement themselves. The only reason I myself have an invitation is that I am Ophriel’s Grandé, so he needs my approval to call the Majeure in the first place.”

“So a Majeure is a conclave of Omegáres?”

“Effectively. I’ve only seen a couple in my life,” Castiel admitted, “And both of those were led by my mom, who always seems able to speak with the Omadonna’s voice at will. I can’t see the same being true of Joshua and Mateo or even Daniel, for that matter. But the simple presence of a triad of Omegáres is sufficient for it to be considered a valid Majeure Conclave. Even if only Daniel has a sharp enough brain to consider the issue in depth. Obviously, there’s a possibility the Omadonna himself might speak on the issue but Daniel has rarely demonstrated the direct touch of the goddess so it's doubtful."

“What if the Omadonna doesn’t speak?” she asked.

“Then it will be taken that silence is consent,” Castiel said. “But it’s telling that Ophriel wants his actions to at least be open to the Omadonna’s interference.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And yes the moment you're all waiting for is getting ever nearer....  
> ...but, as you can see, we aren't there yet ;)


	86. Chapter Eighty One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who are threatening to cry if the meeting doesn't happen in this chapter... wait and read this part with tomorrow's post. I simply didn't have time to get the next bit ready to include in today's post.

Somewhere between the dire tales he had heard on the Free Beta grapevine of dungeons and torture chambers and Crowley's comments about the Packs being mired in ancient tradition, Dean had developed a mental vision of the Pack Hall as being something like a European castle in appearance, with turrets and portcullises and maybe even a moat.

Common sense had, perhaps, adjusted the image from horror story castle to him assuming it more probably looked simply like an imposing stately home.

But nothing had prepared him for the reality.

The Pack Hall at Pierre resembled, if anything, a sleek, shiny alien spacecraft. All shining black glass set in titanium frames, all shaped into sensuous, ergonomic curves. The building looked, at most, a few years old and would have easily graced the front page of any design magazine as a desirable example of the most modern architecture for the low rise office block of some particularly successful tech company.

The original building foundations were several hundred years old, Crowley assured him, and there really were dungeons and pits dug into the cavernous floor that hadn't seen the light of day in centuries. But the exterior was a thoroughly modern, aesthetically pleasing design that could just as well been a corporate headquarters as a living space for a 'primal' society.

And the bizarre contrast of reality with preconceived ideas reminded Dean abruptly of Crowley's warning to discard his prior perceptions.

It made sense, he supposed, for the richest members of society to have the coolest, shiniest toys. Yet Crowley had also warned him that the surface was illusion and the underbelly was the reality. Literally, it seemed,in the case of the Pack Hall. Dean doubted the modern exterior of the building would be of any particular comfort to any unfortunate who found themselves locked in the ancient basement.

Nothing so evidenced that duality of the Packs as much as the appearance of the two individuals waiting for them as Crowley was waved unchallenged through the border gate and drew the car to a halt in the shadow of the huge main Hall.

Daniel, perfect as always, a vision of beauty and grace in an ephemeral gown of fine spun silk, his throat, wrists and ankles draped with a webbed mesh of delicate gem encrusted jewellery, his shoulder length hair held from his face by a matching circlet into which matching emeralds were inset. He was wearing enough wealth on his body to buy a small country, yet it was not displayed to be ostentatious but simply worn with the casual air of one for whom such fripperies were so common place they were barely worth mentioning.

The slight, slender and so beautifully presented Omegá Queen was so perfectly timeless that he could have been picked up and transported to any place, in any century, and still would have been immediately identified by status and designation.

Not so his companion.

The tall dark haired, dark eyed man stood slightly to the side and rear of Daniel was dressed in an equally dark, formal business suit and whilst the cut of the cloth was so precisely flattering to his wide-shouldered, narrow hipped frame that it was undoubtedly as designer as the watch on his wrist, his whole appearance shrieked modernity. He looked more like a politician than a king, more a leader of industry than a Primá of a primal Pack and yet at first sight Dean was immediately certain the coldly austere features of Daniel's companion were those of Ophriel.

"Shit! Fucking damnit," Crowley cursed. "Don't forget what I said about him greeting you," he urged Dean quietly. "And, though he doesn't appear to be in rage, be prepared for his pheromones because if he's upset enough to insist on greeting you against Daniel's clearly stated preference, then he's still going to be emitting enough of that shit to make me wet myself and you cream yourself. Either way, we're both a bit fucked."

Despite himself, Dean found himself amused enough by the comment to brace himself for the meeting. He decided, abruptly, that he was here to see Daniel, not Ophriel, anyway and he would comport himself accordingly.

Crowley opened the driver's door and stepped out, intending to walk around to the passenger side and assist Dean from the car (which he had already explained to Dean was an expected chivalry on his part. Omegáres, he'd explained, somewhat to Dean's disgust, never opened their own car doors but waited for their companion to assist.) The car immediately flooded with the faint sense of enraged Primá pheromones and Dean would have been lying had he claimed they had no effect on him whatsoever. His lip curled, his nose twitched and he felt the unmistakable sensation of slick gathering around the edges of his already open Flores. Yet the reaction, though instinctual, was surprisingly mild. More like reacting to a pungent smell with a polite sneeze rather than with a rabid coughing fit.

He certainly fared better than Crowley who staggered and then dropped heavily to his knees under the sudden onslaught, instinctively baring his throat for the Primá and seemingly incapable of breaking that thrall enough to rise again at all.

Realising it was unlikely, therefore, that Crowley would manage to open the door for him as intended, Dean shrugged, opened his own damned door, and climbed out.

Although Daniel moved to greet him with controlled poise, his apparent coolness was belied by faint tremors of emotion that wracked his frame and eyes that were not only wet with tears but reddened with the evidence of previous weeping. Despite his slight, petite stature, he enfolded Dean in his arms with an embrace so gentle and protective that it took all of Dean's strength not to simply crumble in Daniel's arms and weep himself.

Perhaps realising his comforting gesture was a little too much for Dean to bear at that point, Daniel squeezed him then stepped back. "I am so pleased to welcome you to our home," Daniel said. "Consider all that is here to be yours and all who are here to be at your service, Dean, for as long as you care to grace our lives with your presence."

Then his face twisted with a little irritation and he cast a look over his shoulder of fond annoyance. "You must forgive my mate his inadvertent disrespect. Though he knew full well you had not consented to meet with him, he found it unbearable to imagine you arriving at our Pack Hall and he not immediately according you with the respect you are due. I fear he will remain inconsolable if you do not, at least, permit him to greet you before you and I retire together."

Dean risked a quick glance in Ophriel's direction. For all the sober faced man was emitting enough Primá emotions that poor Crowley was still cowering in submission, Dean had the distinct impression that Ophriel's body was taut less with rage than with nervousness. He had the sudden ridiculous impression that Ophriel had already been chastised by Daniel like a naughty puppy and was actually scared Dean might react badly to his presence.

And this was, Dean reminded himself, the man that Daniel had loved for well over sixty years. That, more than anything, spoke to his character so, therefore, Ophriel did not deserve to be spurned by a guest of his hospitality in his own home.

So Dean turned fully to face the Primá and slowly nodded in his direction, offering an understated but gracious permission for his approach.

Daniel watched thoughtfully as his mate knelt for Dean and pressed a swift but reverent kiss against his mound but he waited until Dean had calmly acknowledged the greeting, allowing Ophriel to rise and swiftly withdraw completely, before speaking.

"You barely reacted to him at all," he said, wrinkling his nose pointedly. "So perhaps the doctor spoke truth about Castiel being your true mate. As an unbonded Omegá in the presence of a Primá, you should definitely have reacted more positively to his touch even if his signature isn't specifically to your liking."

"And it proves he's sane too," Crowley added as he joined them, rubbing dirt off his knees with a sneer of irritated embarrassment. "Because Claire would have been on her back with her legs wide open the moment she sniffed ANY Primá, regardless of his signature."

"Poor pup," Daniel agreed quietly. "Though Chuck has told me she has been a thousand times better since Castiel gifted her with his pup."

Crowley's eyes went huge and he frantically motioned at his own throat in a cutting motion. 

Daniel rolled his eyes. "Don't be ridiculous. Do you honestly think Dean will not find out? Better he knows now and understands that we will never conceal the truth from him. Besides, it was done as a kindness on Castiel's part and the mating bond was immediately severed."

"I wasn't planning on concealing it. Just delaying it a bit. I just thought it would be better if he knew enough to understand the situation in context before we told him," Crowley grumbled. 

This was the point at which Dean decided he'd had it with the whole being talked around and about routine. He was as confused as hell anyway, since he'd thought Claire was an Omegá but everyone was calling Claire a 'girl', and he certainly wanted to know about this pup that HIS supposed true mate had sired, and about this so-called severed mating bite. He made a dramatic and unmistakable 'time-out' gesture, then stomped back to the car, grabbed awkwardly for his tablet, then rejoined them.

Daniel and Crowley waited in subdued silence whilst Dean laboriously typed his questions, then answered them as best they could. By the time the 'conversation' was over Dean was pretty certain of at least two things. Firstly, that Daniel was now absolutely convinced he had survived the 'muting' with his mind fully intact and, secondly, Crowley's subdued demeanour when he climbed back into his car to leave was clearly indicative of an Alpha who was convinced he'd just been deprived of any chance whatsoever of being 'abused' by Dean at any later date.

Dean actually didn't know what to think.

He honestly didn't know whether knocking up Claire had been the charitable act of a self-sacrificing hero or a completely dick move. Oddly, he kind of thought it was somehow both.

But it created more questions than it answered.

Was that why Alastair had muted him? If so, it made no sense whatsoever. If Castiel's reaction to a 'muted' Omegá was simply to pop a bun in their oven and discard them, then surely that was the complete opposite of 'delaying' any mating. It might make their own destined 'marriage' practically the shortest in history but wouldn't actually prevent or delay it.

Would the fact they were supposedly 'true mates' make any difference to Castiel?

He had to assume so, otherwise Alastair wouldn't have made such a point of changing his own scent signature. Maybe, faced with the Claire situation but with 'her' turning out to be Castiel's true mate, Castiel wouldn't have severed the bond. So even if Dean did the whole 'Claire' reaction then Castiel would still feel obliged to offer a mating bite the same way and then, presumably, Crowley and co would be able to convince Castiel not to sever the bond this time by explaining about the scent thing. 

So despite all of Alastair's shit, Castiel WAS still highly likely to want to mate him just out of the same previously demonstrated sense of obligation to a poor fucked up Omegá wanting a pup. 

Which meant if Dean didn't get a handle on his own reactions to Castiel he was going to get immediately pity-fucked into a marriage, whether he liked it or not.

Which also, of course, would completely fuck up the Betas plans, whatever the fuck they were.

But that was hardly a reason to go through with it, was it?

For all he knew, Alastair had only told him all those things as a kind of reverse psychology and what Alastair really wanted was Dean to jump straight on Castiel's cock and knock himself up immediately.

Even trying to figure it out made his head hurt.

So all Dean could do was totally disregard what he knew or thought he knew about other people's possible motivations and simply deal with the situation as it stood from purely his own point of view.

Did he want to mate with Castiel?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

That Jury wasn't just out; it had jumped on a round the world cruise and wouldn't be back for consultation anytime in the foreseeable future.

So the immediate problem was that Castiel Cainson was apparently expected to arrive in Pierre before sundown and he wasn't anywhere near ready to make a life changing decision like that.

And though Daniel had assured him there was no reason whatsoever why he couldn't simply lock himself in Daniel's apartment and refuse to come out for the duration of Castiel's visit, that solution felt like it would be a dick move of his own.

Besides, if he hid in Daniel's room he wouldn't be able to attend the conclave that would take place in two days time.

A conclave being held about him.

A conclave so unusual that Omegáres were actually being allowed to speak.

And that was a thought-provoking idea in itself. He'd seen the physical challenge of his muting as being terrible because he was struggling to communicate, yet Daniel's explanation of the difference of a Majeure conclave from the norm begged the question of whether it made any fundamental difference anyway. What was the point of having a voice if no one listened to it anyway?

For all he knew, this conclave might be his only true opportunity to have a voice at all.

So turning his back on that opportunity was not an option.

He had to attend.

He had to find a way.

So, what did he have and what did he need?

He had, apparently, an inbuilt pre-programmed biological addiction to the smell of Castiel Cainson. 

And therefore what he needed was some sure as fuck sure-fire way not to smell it in the first place.


	87. Chapter Eighty Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because of the holidays, and having visitors,I'm probably going to have to take a couple of days off from posting.
> 
> So to make up for that I've made this one a pretty large one.

Something was bothering Meg.

It was niggling at her like a constant unscratchable itch and the more she thought about it, the less it made sense.

Even having a private jet ready to fly them direct; by the time they had packed, driven to the airport, flown almost 900 miles and would still have to land yet and drive from the airport to the Pierre Pack Land, the only reason they would arrive before sundown was that Pierre’s timezone ran an hour behind Detroit’s.

So she’d already had plenty of time to think during the journey.

She’d also had the opportunity to have a long telephone conversation with Crowley, who’d called her as soon as he’d gotten into his car to drive back to Sioux Falls. Meg was really excited about the Beta girl, Charlie Bradbury. Everything Crowley had told her about Charlie convinced Meg that the girl was going to be a seriously beneficial addition to the Pack. Obviously that wasn’t the primary reason for Crowley recruiting her as an intern but from a dollar point of view (and Meg was far too responsible not to consider everything from an economic viewpoint where Pack finances were involved) the idea of an internship was a huge financial burden that could rarely be justified.

Obviously, the cost of sending Charlie to university was just a drop in the ocean if it was considered part of an Omegá's 'bride price’, as Crowley was suggesting, but Meg was feeling very doubtful about the whole idea that Dean was supposedly Castiel’s ‘true mate’.

And that wasn’t any reflection on the Omegá .

Meg thought it would be hilarious if it was true.

As much as she loved Castiel, and understood he didn’t mean to be such a….well, such a Primá, really… Meg had been increasingly irritated by his careless dismissal of Dean as being quite ‘obviously’ a peculiar oddity who probably needed to be shipped off to Norway at the first possible opportunity in the hope that Norwegian Primáres had less cultured palates. Castiel hadn’t even seen the Omegá but had already firmly put him in a box and labelled him ‘unsuitable’. It would damned well serve Castiel right if Dean _did_ turn out to be the most ‘unsuitable’ Bride ever _and_ Castiel’s true mate.

So Meg, who thought Dean was hands down the most gorgeous Omegá ever anyway, was all for setting the cat amongst the pigeons. She thought that a less conventional Bride was exactly what Castiel needed to kick away the stubborn remnants of his upbringing. She’d always joked that she’d married a crown prince, but the truth was it wasn’t even really a joke at all. Castiel was a product of a family that were the absolute royalty of the Pack world. The Primáres from the line of Adam were traditionalists and that translated in reality to a stuffy, stuck-up mien and an oppressive formality that trapped the Primáres and Omegáres alike into rigid roles that were so governed by societal expectations that there was little room for any genuine expression of personality. Only Chuck had broken the mould of what an Omegá was expected to be and, frankly, he’d only gotten away with his behaviour because he was so clearly and demonstrably goddess-touched.

Chuck’s unconventionality was tolerated because he was ‘holy’. His ability to speak with the voice of the Omadonna unfailingly offered him a ‘free pass’ whenever people’s mutterings about his inappropriate clothing and demeanour were raised from vague niggles to genuine grievance. Meg was pretty sure Cain would have ripped the throats out of anyone who had ever dared to criticise Chuck to his face, since the quiet Prima was clearly genuinely entranced by his Bride, but Cain’s private satisfaction with Chuck hadn’t prevented the more traditional Pack members from whispering in corners that Chuck was not quite ‘suitable’. Meg had little doubt that those same people would probably have waged a gradual war of attrition against Chuck, slowly building pressure on Cain to set aside his now barren mate and replace him with one more publicly acceptable if not for the fact that everyone was just a little bit intimidated by the Omadonna’s demonstrable preference to speak through Chuck’s mouth.

Though, it must be said, even _that_ was seen by some as proof of Chuck’s ‘unsuitablility’. For many people, the fact Chuck was so requently used by the goddess in that way was proof in itself that Chuck was sufficiently mentally flawed that the Goddess was simply able to take advantage of that mental ‘weakness’ to take him over.

And the reason she was thinking about Chuck was that it was he, Castiel’s mother, who was the source of Meg’s considerable sense of niggling doubt.

If Dean truly was Castiel’s ‘true mate’, why on earth wasn’t Chuck flying to Pierre to be part of the Force Majeure Conclave?

Meg had developed an almost superstitious belief that Chuck wasn’t just _occasionally_ prophetic. Meg had slowly grown to believe that Chuck was practically omniscient and somehow knew practically everything of import long before it actually happened. And though clearly that wasn’t the case, otherwise he would obviously have given warning to them that Dean should have been taken into protective custody the moment Sam was taken away, still Meg would have expected Chuck to at least know that Dean was Castiel’s destined bride. That seemed like the kind of thing a prophetic mother would pay attention to.

Meg just didn’t see how Castiel could genuinely be destined to be one of the few people in history to actually meet their ‘true mate’ and yet for that important and salient fact to never have been mentioned by his mother.

And she understood that prophetic visions were probably not an exact science so maybe Chuck might simply have somehow ‘missed’ the importance of Dean in Castiel’s life but, obviously, the minute Crowley had phoned her and explained in detail what had happened to Dean and the claim of the man who had mutliated him that Dean was Castiel’s true mate, Meg had called Colette and given her all the details.

Yet, apparently, Chuck was STILL not intending to visit Pierre.

And surely that meant Dean wasn’t Castiel’s intended after all. Because if Chuck couldn't be bothered to meet Dean, he obviously didn't consider him to be of any particular import.

Castiel himself was clearly hoping his mother was correct since he’d initially met the suggestion with the wide eyed shock of imminent roadkill, then proceeded to move rapidly into blind denial mode.

He too was on the ball enough to point out that Chuck’s indifference was practically proof that the Beta agent, Alastair, had simply been trying to cause some kind of furious chain-reaction within the Packs for some as yet unknown but clearly nefarious reason.

“I thought you always believed in the idea of true mates,” she pointed out cautiously. “I admit I personally always thought the idea was just a load of silly tripe best suited to Lifetime afternoon movies for bored housewives,” she admitted, “but you’ve always been a romantic, CP. Since the first day we met you’ve always claimed there was someone absolutely perfect out there waiting for you. Your one perfect unicorn. So why, faced with the fact that someone is actually validifying your weird notion and saying it’s actually true, are you so insistent it can’t be?”

“Because my ‘one’ is not a mutilated whore,” Castiel snarled, his eyes flashing with Primá luminescence.

Meg blinked, then curled her lip in disgust. “Asshole,” she spat.

Castiel opened his mouth, clearly intending to ‘justify’ his position.

Meg snapped her phone earbuds back in place, turned her back on him, and pointedly called Crowley back so she had an excuse to ignore him completely.

~

# So I have to be naked? #

“You don’t have to _be_ anything,” Daniel assured him. “As far as I am concerned you can attend the conclave wearing a pair of blue jeans and a biker jacket. It would be… problematic…though, if you wished to sit in _judgement_ whilst clothed. There are some traditions that deserve to be shattered apart and others that have a certain level of validity. In a conclave, Omegáres and Primáres who sit in judgement always do so naked. Witnesses may wear whatever they prefer, though, so you may obviously attend the conclave but not 'officially' if you wish to remain clothed."

# Why naked? #

“Because pack justice is harsh and brutal and honest. It is as naked as the judges who pass it. The whole point of a conclave is that the truth is laid bare, that dishonesty is offered no place to hide. It is considered that liars and deceivers fear nakedness because dishonesty cannot survive the stark examining gaze of naked truth.”

Dean considered that and nodded his acceptance of the point. The idea wouldn’t even particularly bother him except for the fact he was so ashamed of his docked mound. He wasn’t sure he could bear to have it on view, particularly when the other three Omegáres who would be present were uncut. Unsure he could even bear to put the thought into words, he just gestured pointedly at his groin.

Daniel arched a brow, then frowned in contemplation. “I understand, though didn’t that ‘Alastair’ suggest that your genitals will eventually regenerate?”

Dean nodded.

“It does actually make perfect sense, to be honest,” Daniel admitted thoughtfully. “I don’t know why it’s never occurred to us before. When he was a very young pup, Evan Adamson had a terrible accident and was burned quite horrifically across the right side of his face. It’s why Seth never even contemplated him as a Bride originally. I told you Seth was a shallow man. But by the time I had made the decision to mate with Ophriel and Seth was forced to give up and look elsewhere for a mate, Evan’s face had restored itself to perfect beauty once more. It took at most fifteen years to transform from terrible thick colloidal scarring to flawless skin. So it makes perfect sense that the scars of docked Omegáres aren’t thickening as we had imagined but simply appearing to do so because the flesh beneath them is actually regenerating itself.”

# Which would be fine if the conclave was happening in 50 years # Dean pointed out snidely.

Daniel shrugged. “It makes docking nothing more than an unfortunate fashion statement, realistically. Why not think of it as more an unconventional hair cut than a mutilation? Both would grow back in time.”

# Easy for you to say # Dean griped, though he had to admit that Daniel had made a good point.

Daniel frowned at him thoughtfully. His mouth trembled a bit, in clear indecision, then he straightened his shoulders firmly and looked Dean straight in the eye. “You are right, Dean. It is indeed far too easy for me to say. So I shall do it too. I will share your ‘bad hair cut’ and we can face the world together, unashamed by our somewhat unconventional ‘haircut’ until the time comes for it to grow back again.”

Dean blinked in total disbelief. Daniel, it was clear, actually meant it. He was prepared to voluntarily undergo ‘docking’ just to make the experience easier for Dean to bear.

And faced with the genuine, unbelievable, (and obviously unacceptable) offer of the older Omegá to share Dean’s burden, the terrible dreadful weight of it that had been choking him since the moment he had woken up in the hospital, lessened so abruptly that he only truly understood how heavy it had been to carry when it abruptly floated free and away from him altogether.

It was, as Daniel said, just a severe, savage and somewhat unflattering ‘haircut’. It was temporary. It was already apparently ‘growing back’. It was, essentially, no one’s business except his own anyway. Maybe he should shave his head bald too whilst he was at it, just to really make a point.

He smirked at the older Omegá , who seemed a little taken aback at the unexpected response to his offer.

# Nope. This is MY fashion statement, Daniel. Be a leader, not a follower. #

Daniel looked completely bewildered, so Dean added,

# Thanks, Daniel. Seriously. But it’s not necessary. I am going to own this. You’re right. This can just be a style statement. And fuck anyone who has a problem with it. It’s their issue, not mine.#

“And so you will sit in judgement with us?” Daniel asked cautiously.

Dean nodded firmly.

A wide relieved smile spread over Daniel’s face. “Thank goodness,” he said. “I think Ophriel would have had a stroke attempting to not criticise my decision to follow your ’new-fangled style' of a neatly trimmed mound."

~

Although at 22 Castiel could not be considered a pup and, indeed, had a demeanour and sense of responsibility that suited a far more mature individual, he was, emotionally at least, barely an adult man. That emotional immaturity was greatly exacerbated by several factors. He was male, which was reason enough for his inability to ‘get in touch’ with his feelings. He was a Primá, which was a virtual guarantee he wouldn’t be one of the rare males who _were_ more sensitively in tune with their emotions than the majority and, he was a Primá of Adam’s line which had probably eliminated any remaining last hope of him being anything other than an emotional asshole.

Meg knew that, which was why she had spent several years practically kicking him into shape since she knew ‘sensitivity’ didn’t come to him naturally.

Oh, he was undoubtedly a ‘good’ man. He was pious and righteous and heroic and brave. He was first in line to jump to the defence of the weak. He didn’t hesitate to leap into dangerous water to save an innocent. He genuinely wanted to change the world to be a better place for the Packs in general and the Omegáres in particular. He had worked tirelessly to aid the Confederacy and he had done his damnest to save Dean (and Sam for that matter) with his clever manipulation of the Sioux Falls councillors.

And Meg was proud of the man he had already become and the man she was sure he would later evolve into as time and maturity deepened his youthful passions into experienced wisdom.

But he was still an asshole.

Which was why when he, as a clear attempt to grovel a bit in the face of her clear disapproval, asked to see the original video of Dean before they landed, she lied and told him it wasn’t loaded onto her laptop.

She told the lie for two reasons. Firstly, it was too late in the day for him to gain anything by getting a ’sneak preview’ of Dean’s appearance as he was undoubtedly going to meet him in the flesh soon anyway (and Crowley had assured her that Dean was considerably more stunning in reality anyway) and secondly, sadly, she didn’t trust that Castiel wouldn’t somehow judge Dean even more harshly to be a ‘whore’ if he witnessed Dean’s sexual reactions on the stage for himself.

It made Meg want to scream with frustration.

“Explain something to me, CP,” she said. “Considering how many times you’ve fucked me, and Benny and Victor and Crowley and let’s not forget Claire, and that except for the possible exception of Claire, never done any of those acts with a gun to your head, why is it okay for you , and every other Primá, to be a total hound dog but you still think an Omegá needs to be a virgin? Why did you marry _me_ if chastity is so important to you? Why didn’t it bother you that I was already a total skank before you even met me?”

“I’ve told you before,” Castiel said, sulkily. “An Omegá is different. I know you could choose to bounce on every cock in the entire country and still retain the agency to make the decision each and every time of whether or not you want to do it. I know every time you let me in your body that you are doing so of your full and complete freewill. I know you are capable of cutting me off at any moment and saying I am no longer welcome to touch you. And, I’m sure, you are currently so pissed off with me that you are seriously considering the prospect,” he added ruefully.

“It has crossed my mind,” she agreed.

“An Omegá doesn’t have the same ability to make that choice, Meg. I don’t mean legally. I mean biologically. If this Dean is my ‘true mate’ which, I admit, I honestly don’t believe, then he has even LESS ability to make that choice. I’ll walk into the room. He’ll take one sniff of me and all of his choices will be gone. Where’s the fairness in that? For either of us? I end up with a bride I don’t want and he ends up with a mate he doesn’t really want either. We both just end up victims of our biology.”

“I understand that,” she agreed, “though I would have thought the whole point of true mates is that you are guaranteed a level of compatibility in more than simply a biological sense. But setting that aside, my problem is that you have already decided you don’t WANT him. Because he’s ‘used goods’ or some such crap and because he doesn’t look the way you imagine he should. Oh, and because he is ‘mutilated’. Tell me something, CP. If I am ever unfortunate enough to be raped by someone, are you going to turn me away as no longer ‘suitable’? If I suffer an illness or an accident that leaves me scarred or mutilated, will you set me aside?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Meg. I love you. I’d never stop loving you just because of something like that,” Castiel protested.

“Then how can something like that stop you seeing whether you can fall in love _with_ someone?” she asked. “Why aren’t you willing to at least be open to the possibility?”

Castiel pondered her words thoughtfully for a long while, then dipped his head in acceptance. “You’re right,” he admitted ruefully. “I AM an asshole.”

And Meg remembered why she kept hitting her head against Castiel’s brick wall. Because, eventually, it did always start to crumble beneath her assault.

“Okay,” she said. “Whilst I agree it’s highly improbable Dean really is your ‘true mate’ since I’m not even convinced such a thing exists, and I certainly can't imagine Chuck not knowing about his existence if he _is_ genuinely your destined mate, what I do know for certain is that Deanis a truly stunning and gorgeous unmated Omegá and you are a truly stupid but teachable unmated Primá and there is at least a remote, if improbable, chance that the two of you might be compatible anyway.

“And I know he has been ‘muted’ but Crowley is absolutely one hundred percent certain that it has done nothing to him except ‘temporarily’ removed his ability to communicate effectively and, probably, has made him a little more susceptible to Primá influence but maybe not even _that_ , since he apparently handled being greeted by Ophriel with complete grace and a totally dignified deportment. So I think it’s reasonable to suppose that everything we thought about ‘muting’ only applies to rut house Omegáres and Claire’s particularly terrible reaction was hugely influenced by the fact she was docked as a newborn. Claire was screwed up from the day she was born, she was brought up like a pet animal. She never even had a chance of becoming a ’normal’ person. I don’t think it’s fair or valid to compare Dean with Claire at all, though I’m sure it was done to him with the intention to make us think of him in that light.”

“Even if I accept all of that, and I have to admit you make a good point, Meg, I still can’t imagine being attracted to an Omegá who looks like he apparently does,” Castiel admitted, reluctantly. "It doesn't matter even if he's considered the most beautiful Omegá in the whole world by everyone else, if he doesn't appear particularly beautiful to me."

Meg shrugged lightly. “That’s fine,” she said breezily. “I’m not saying you have to fancy him, Castiel. I’m just asking you to meet him with an open mind.”

Castiel nodded.

“And scent blockers,’ she added.

“What?"

“I’m sure Dean and Daniel are going to do their best to ensure Dean can’t smell you. Crowley said Dean was always planning to be wearing some kind of stinky oil to distract him from you anyway because _Dean_ is just as aware as you are that he might need to have control of himself for your meeting. See? He isn’t a mindless idiot, CP. He’s a bright, smart pup. He apparently doesn't want you to jump all over him anyway."

Castiel did a slight double take. "He doesn't?"

Meg smirked at the look on her husband's face. His expression was definitely closer to offended than relieved. Honestly, she thought to herself, there was nothing quite as fragile in the whole damned world as a Prima's ego.

"No he most certainly doesn't," she told him firmly. "He wants to attend the conclave purely in his capacity as an Omegá, not as an opportunity for any unmated horny Primáres to slobber all over him and, apparently, that includes you.

"But the problem is that if the two of you are true mates, then it doesn’t matter whether neither of you are particularly interested in mating, even if you can’t smell each other properly, because the minute you ‘greet’ him, and your lips touch his flesh and your DNA makes contact with his, it’ll be game over anyway. So, I’m thinking we need to use something like second-skin. You know, that invisible stuff you paint over a wound instead of a band-aid? I think if you cover your lips and Dean covers his mound, then your flesh won’t actually touch at all. So you can both get through the initial greeting without either of you making fools of yourselves and then, maybe, get a chance to actually meet each other properly later. See if there are any sparks between you without the influence of your biology colouring your interaction.”

Castiel thought about it, then nodded. “I can’t see any reason not to take the precaution,’ he agreed. “I don’t believe its going to be necessary, but it doesn’t hurt to do it anyway.”

“Cool,” she agreed. “I’ll make the suggestion to Daniel that Dean does the same.”

~

"Jophiel and Joshua have arrived, but they won't be joining the Pack for our evening meal because Joshua is nursing and his new pup apparently found the plane ride a little stressful. So Joshua wants to spend the evening settling in and Jophiel can't bring himself to leave them alone. He's all too proud papa at the moment for polite company anyway. He sends both of us his most sincere apologies and hopes you will forgive him the inadvertent slight," Daniel advised him, hanging up the phone. "Morgana has their comfort in hand, so I do not need to visit them myself this evening."

# Raphael?#

"He and Mateo will arrive some time tomorrow. So it's only Castiel and Megan joining us at tonight's feast. It's not too late to change your mind, Dean. Meg has stressed that even up to the moment they are about to enter the main hall, should you suddenly decide you aren't ready to meet with Castiel, neither will be offended to be turned away at the door and they will simply eat in their guest quarters rather than with the Pack."

Dean appreciated the consideration shown by Meg's offer. He and Daniel had spent several hours considering the best way to handle the situation. Although there were obvious risks to having his initial meeting in such a public setting, there were many benefits too. Not least the multitudinous number of scents that would be present within a crowded room. Although Daniel had honestly told him that neither Castiel nor Meg actually believed there was much probability of he and Castiel being true mates in reality, the Primá was apparently willing to take a number of precautions regardless.

In addition to the amulet, Daniel was planning to dab a paste of menthol under Dean's nostrils and, apparently, Castiel was planning do the same. The 'second-skin', was painted invisibly on his mound and the gown he was wearing was one borrowed from Daniel. It was weightier than his own gowns, the silk woven more tightly so its effect was less translucent and therefore the material protecting his mound from Castiel's lips was far more substantial. It definitely seemed wiser to have their first meeting take place before the conclave when neither would be wearing anything.

There was no denying the fact he was beginning to feel more excited than nervous.

Dean didn't have an issue with Castiel doubting they were true mates. It wasn't exactly an idea he had total credence in himself. He really appreciated Castiel's willingness to take precautions regardless. It definitely took a level of stress away from his own mind and allowed him to actually enjoy the idea of meeting the handsome Primá in the flesh. He was actually back to feeling a bit star-struck again now.

Plus he was looking forward to the meal itself.

It seemed a little strange to him that the senior Pack members apparently ate together in the main hall every evening. He supposed it could have been primarily a logistical decision, since it eliminated the need for cooking facilities to be provided in all the residential quarters but since Daniel had explained that the Pack Hall had two separate large dedicated canteen areas with attached kitchens, that attended to breakfast and lunch for everyone, plus an evening meal for the lower status Pack members, the distinct setting of an evening meal for senior Pack members only definitely smacked of a deliberate luxury and, presumably, an opportunity for Pack business to be discussed in a convivial setting.

Either way, he felt that attending the meal from his very first day would set the tone for his future interaction with Ophriel's Pack members. If he was going to be living in Pierre for the foreseeable future, then it was crucial that he didn't begin his residency by hiding away in Daniel's quarters like a frightened mouse.

It was, perhaps, just particularly unfortunate that his first evening coincided with Castiel's visit but it was a surmountable problem.

And, maybe....just maybe.... if the Olbas oil and the second skin worked and he could get through the meeting without embarrassing himself then... well, Daniel had told him that if, by some miracle, Castiel was genuinely interested in him, and that interest was not totally unwanted by himself, then the Primá could enter a period of chaperoned visits that might culminate in the formal offer of his bride price. An offer that, naturally, he himself would be free to accept or deny.

Though Dean wasn't even sure whether that was something that interested him, he couldn't deny there was a small part of him that thought the idea of being gradually seduced was a bit romantic.

# How much is my bride price? #

Daniel looked a bit uncomfortable. "That's difficult to quantify," he said, eventually. "Strictly speaking, you were bought for the sum of $1 plus consideration. The consideration was huge, mind you, as it was the granting of a 99 year lease for the land on which Sioux Falls City is built. But since Ophriel has since given notice of his plans to raze the city and poison the land in three days, unless his decision is overturned by the conclave, I suppose a 99 year lease of a parcel of wasteland is not particularly valuable. Still, I suppose we could calculate the loss of 99 years worth of tithes and call _that_ your bride price." Daniel offered him a conspiratorial smile. "Don't worry. One way or another we'll justify your Bride price being something suitably astronomical."

And that, really, said it all.

The cold reality of being an Omegá was the need for someone to pay a sufficiently high Bride price for you so you could feel validated.

And there was nothing romantic about that, was there?

~

"And you're sure you've never seen this Dean in any of your visions, mom?" Castiel asked.

"Well, I had the impression there was someone special waiting for you," Chuck replied, "but I never saw what they looked like and neither could I swear they were supposedly a true mate. Besides, it just means an Omegá is particularly susceptible to your pheromonal signature, doesn't it? I doubt that's any reliable indicator of suitability. I don't remember looking at your sire and making the decision to mate him just because I liked the way he smelt," Chuck laughed.

"That's what I thought," Castiel sighed. "Well, never mind. It's a huge relief he isn't like Claire at least. Apparently, despite the muting he's perfectly sane and doesn't appear to have an advanced reproductive yet and, anyway, I've promised Meg that I'll meet him with an open mind and at least see whether there's any chance of us being compatible. I've decided to get my head out of my ass, mother, and stop disrespecting Omegáres by expecting them to conform to my personal prejudices. I hope you're proud," he laughed at himself disparagingly.

Sitting next to him in the limousine that had collected them from the airport, listening in to the call on speaker, Meg offered him a beaming smile of approval.

The response from Chuck was not so enthusiastic.

"Oh," Chuck said, after a pause. "I see."

Castiel frowned. Whilst he hadn't been expecting a ringing endorsement, he had at least hoped for a little encouragement. "You don't sound pleased."

"Don't mind me," Chuck said. "Obviously you're a grown man now and you must follow your heart. It's just... oh, nothing, don't mind me. Do what you feel is right."

Castiel frowned. "Clearly it isn't 'nothing'. Please, mother. Tell me what's wrong."

Chuck sighed. "It's just that I thought I had more time."

"For what?"

"Well, I don't know if I should say this but... well, I found you a perfect Omegá, Castiel. He's just a little pup, not even actually presented yet, but his mother agreed to let me take him regardless because, oddly, it turns out I have a direct blood relationship with him so I had to do one of those silly DNA tests to prove it but eventually the Betas had to allow me to bring him into Pack Land. And obviously he's just a pup so it will be a few years before he will be looking for a mate but he's so pretty and so pure and I knew how much you always wanted a little, perfect virgin Bride, so I had planned... well, no matter. I'm sure I'll be able to find him an absolutely superb Primá anyway, so you do whatever you feel is right."

"Oh," Castiel said, suddenly looking a bit sick.

Meg frowned thoughtfully, her mind lasering in on a detail that she wasn't sure Castiel would have noted. Maybe he hadn't even read that part of Crowley's report yet. "Well, I'm sure he's quite lovely," she said, "but, as you said, he's just a little pup whereas Dean Winchester is a really lovely adult Omegá."

"Of course," Chuck replied smoothly. "Well, at least you know you have options, Castiel. I'm sure you'll make the right decision, either way."

As the call finished, both Castiel and Meg sat in stunned silence. Meg was, however, sure her own state of confusion was for a totally different reason than her husband's.

What the hell was Chuck playing at? 

He hadn't reacted to the Winchester name at all.

And that meant he was deliberately concealing his relationship to Dean from Castiel. And an omission that huge was as good as a lie. And if he was lying about that, then maybe he was lying about the true mates thing too.

Meg couldn't even begin to imagine why Chuck would do something like that and she knew, absolutely, that even the slightest suggestion of criticism of his mother would drive Castiel into a defensive mode that would inevitably cause more issues than it solved.

"That's really sweet of Chuck," she said, carefully, "though I can't imagine how he's gotten the impression you're so unlikely to find an Omegá for yourself that he's got to groom a little pup up for the role. I know he means well, but it's a bit...distasteful, don't you think?"

Castiel looked at her in surprise, then frowned in thought. "Yeah, you're right," he admitted. "For a moment, all I wanted to do was turn the car around and jump back in the plane to go see that Omegá he's talking about. But you're absolutely right. The idea is a bit... well, I don't mean to be rude about mom and I know he's imagining he's doing a nice thing but you're right about it being 'grooming' because by the time the pup's old enough to mate, I'll be almost thirty and that's a bit, well, wrong."

"So you'll still give Dean a chance?" she asked cautiously.

"If anything, it's made me more determined to try," Castiel replied.

Which, Meg decided, was probably not what Chuck had intended at all.

~

There were distinct advantages to being as old as sin and as rich as fuck, Dean decided as he wandered through Daniel's huge walk-in wardrobe.

"Obviously you're a lot taller than me, but a lot of these designs will still look absolutely stunning as knee length Kaftans rather than floor length gowns," Daniel assured him. "So if you see anything you prefer to what you're wearing feel free to grab it. Either way, though, we need to find you some suitable jewellery. I know your hair isn't long enough to need holding back but I think you still need something around your forehead and a matching torc around your neck that will look like a beautiful necklace but will cover that scar. I think if we find a nice enough piece you could get away with wearing it at the conclave too. Naked doesn't actually have to equate to bare, because bridle harnesses are allowed. I think you're too gorgeously male to wear frothy jewellery anyway. I'm thinking you'd suit something plain but elegant, stylish but a little 'chunky' and if we go for a matching set of harness, torc and circlet, it will look classy. Is that okay with you?"

Dean nodded his agreement. If Daniel wanted to put tens of thousands of dollars worth of jewellery on him to meet the Pack members, he had no objections. It was, after all, about initial impressions and walking into the hall looking like a visiting. Princess rather than a rescued waif purchased for $1 was a definite improvement.

He tried not to listen to the voice whispering in his ear that it would also improve Castiel's impression of him because that wasn't the point at all. No, siree. He was not getting dressed up for Castiel at all. It was not even a consideration. Wasn't on his radar. He wasn't even thinking about the Primá. So there.

"I was going to suggest yellow gold with emeralds," Daniel said, sorting through literally drawers filled with treasures. "But it's so typically Omegá to go for green. Complete lack of imagination, really." He grinned, a little sheepishly, given that he was fully draped in emeralds himself. "So I'm thinking we should aim at something unique, since you are unique yourself. And decades ago I was gifted something, that if I can find it, might be absolutely perfect. I never wore the set at all, because it just seemed too heavy and solid for me but you've got the build to carry it off.

"Ah, here it is. It's from Brittaniá. Absolutely ancient, supposedly, and it was presented to me as a gift for a 'war bride', and I always thought it looked like something a warrior princess would wear in battle," he laughed. "It's bronze, not gold, and the stones are called lapis lazuli and they are blue like Primá rage. So it's true value is in its antiquity rather than its materials. But it is more 'you' than any other pieces I own and, I think you are really going to like this touch..." Daniel grinned and pulled out a long, curved ceremonial dagger made of an animal bone inset in a matching bronze handle. "This attaches to your bridle harness. It's quite scandalous, Dean, for an Omegá to bear a weapon but, strictly speaking, it's just jewellery so no one can protest about it...much." He shrugged and winked.

~

"So, are you ready?" Meg asked, as they paused outside the Pack Hall doors.

"I don't know why I feel so damned nervous," Castiel confessed. "I can't explain it, Meg. I have absolutely no Idea what's going on in my mind but... but suddenly it feels like stepping through that door is going to be the most important thing I'll ever do."

"Maybe it's destiny calling," she suggested sincerely. "Maybe he really is going to be the one."

"I thought you didn't believe in true mates," he reminded her.

"I didn't," she said. "But I've changed my mind. It seems to me there are too many people trying to stop you two meeting for it not to be really important that you do. So don't fuck it up, CP. Go in there and blow him away."

He seemed confused by her comment but shrugged anyway and stepped forward so the Alpha guards swung the door open to allow their entrance.

~

Dean stiffened in his seat as the door opened.

Because Ophriel was a stickler for protocol and was determined to show equal honour to his Omegá houseguests as he was to his bride but only had one right hand side to seat them at, he had removed his own seat entirely and created instead an Omegá Dias at the top end of the hall.

So Dean and Daniel were both enthroned on two of four seats on a raised platform, and all the other Pack Members, including Ophriel were seated at tables below in a rough horse shoe design. it was, Daniel had pointed out quietly, roughly the way the conclave would be laid out anyway, so it was labour saving in its own way to do it now for the visitors. What was particularly interesting about the design was that none of the Primáres were set apart from the Pack but would simply mingle amongst them.

A gap had been left at the bottom of the horseshoe and it was through this that Castiel and Megan Cainson entered, both midnight haired, though whilst Meg's eye were as dark as her hair, Castiel's were so blue they echoed the lapis lazuli adorning Dean's head and throat.

Dean shivered, a full body tremble, and it wasn't pheromones that he was reacting to since he could smell nothing except the pungent stench of eucalyptus and menthol. His shivering response was purely to Castiel the man, not Castiel the Primá.

And it didn't matter that he'd seen pictures of the man, that he'd even seen him on TV interviews with full sound and vision, nothing could ever have prepared him for the reality of the man in the flesh.

He was simply male.

Primal.

He didn't walk as much as prowl.

His dark suit blurred in Dean's eyes until it seemed less fabric than pelt.

Castiel Cainson prowled up the hall like a black panther, sleek and deadly and so goddamned beautiful that the breath caught in Dean's throat and his Flores, damned treacherous organ that it was, throbbed and dampened. 

And there was no biological imperative in play, no true mate pheromones, no chemical or hormonal excuses whatsoever for his reaction.

It was simple, straightforward, human lust.

Hot damn.

All the precautions he had put in place to control his Omegá and it had never once occurred to him that what might actually betray him was not his Omegá side but his human one.

Dean Winchester took his first look at Castiel Cainson and realised he was totally, completely and utterly in lust with him.

Oops.

So much for playing it cool, then.

~

Castiel stepped into the hall with such firm resolve that momentum carried him midway to the Omegá Dias before he even registered what Dean Winchester looked like.

And on seeing him the breath seemed to simply whoosh out of his body and his confident prowling stride faltered and he froze in place.

It was like a brain freeze, or that was how he tried to explain it to himself later as he struggled to understand what the fuck he had done. As he tried desperately to understand why he had done it.

Nobody had warned him. Nobody had told him. Well, if they had told him he clearly hadn't been listening

Because if he HAD been listening, if he had ever even fucking bothered to watch the damned video back when Dean had been in the hospital then he wouldn't have sent sodding Daniel to the hospital to convince Dean to leave. He would have turned up with an army of Alphas and just battered the doors down.

And that made everything HIS fault. Dean's docking and rape and muting. All of it had had happened after Castiel had turned his back. After he had allowed a comment about the Omegá looking like an Alpha to poison his perception enough that he hadn't even bothered to look for himself.

Dean Winchester, sitting there in front of him with the proud appearance of some ancient warrior queen, the most goddamned gorgeous man who had ever graced the planet, the most drop dead beautiful magnificent Omegá imaginable had been mutilated and raped and abused because of HIM.

This wasn't hormones speaking. He couldn't smell a goddamned thing except the menthol under his nostrils. This wasn't his Primá lusting over Dean's Omegá. This was Castiel the man, looking at the man he had allowed so much terrible harm to come to and realising he was absolutely, completely and utterly in love with him.

Just like that.

Just like a bolt of lightning striking him down.

As sudden and terrible and final as that.

He was in love.

And he couldn't even breathe, let alone gasp out an apology. 

And anyway what possible words or deeds could possibly put right the harm he had already done with his inaction and his false, stupid pride?

Dean probably hated him.

Dean probably loathed him.

Dean didn't deserve to even have to share the same air as him, let alone be forced through politeness to let Castiel's loathsome presence touch his flesh.

Castiel's face contorted into a grimace of pure self-disgust.

He had done enough. He couldn't possibly make Dean endure that too.

"I am so sincerely sorry," he gasped. "I have no words to express my regret."

And, seeing no reaction but frozen horror on Dean's beautiful face, he turned on his heel and strode out of the room, removing his disgusting presence from Dean's eyes.

~

Half way to the Dias, Castiel's confident prowl faltered and then froze.

Dean wasn't sure whether it was his appearance or his smell that caused the reaction. Maybe both. because the expressions of loathing and disgust that twisted over Castiel's face were so extreme they surely couldn't have been purely related to his looks.

"I am so sincerely sorry," Castiel choked. "I have no words to express my regret."

Dean froze, his hope shattering into tiny, shards of glass that seemed to pierce his heart like tiny, vicious knives.

And, uncaring of the pain he'd inflicted by his cruel rejection, the bastard simply turned around and left.

And if Dean had been able to speak he liked to imagine he would have yelled something after him like "Yeah, well I think you suck donkeys too, you fucker!"

But , under the circumstances, he was a little limited in his ability to react.

And he was fucked if he was going to let the entire gathered Pack see his heartbreak.

So he simply shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly, rolled his eyes and reached for the wine glass on his table.

And if it shook and sloshed wildly as he lifted it to form a protective barrier between his face and the gathered Pack, well, he at least had the excuse of his fucked up hands to excuse himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, bet none of you are thinking 'merry christmas' to me now ;)


	88. Chapter Eighty Three

With the experience and wisdom borne of having a century of life tucked firmly under his belt, Ophriel liked to consider himself well beyond the youthful passions that caused people to act without thinking.

He was a man of reason, of thoughtful consideration, and rarely, if ever, reacted to situations without fully considering the consequences and possible reactions his actions might cause.

So, instead of rising to his feet with a roar of fury and charging out of the Pack Hall in pursuit of Castiel, Ophriel mirrored Dean's own apparent nonchalance, took a long draft of ale and then finished the rather splendid meal on his plate whilst listening to the end of his table companion's tale.

And only after his plate was empty and his goblet was drained and one of his first Alpha's had finished his (rather boring) story, did Ophriel rise to his feet, politely bid his leave of Daniel and Dean by bowing at the Dias, and leave the hall.

He walked not in the direction of the guest hall but though the kitchens, where he made a point of praising all the Beta staff for their efforts and service that evening, to the room where Morgana filed all the important Pack documentation.

Ophriel searched the filing cabinet for his own papers, double-checked everything was in order and then he exchanged a quick series of texts with Daniel to check he and Dean had returned safely to Daniel's apartment and, only then, proceeded to take the long walk to the VIP guest quarters.

His overriding imperative was, as always, the protection of his Queen.

He knew, of course, that he had no obligation to defend Dean's honour and an absolutely unavoidable obligation to protect Daniel. So it could, he supposed, be argued that there was no societal or moral need to address Castiel's disrespect.

But for something like that to happen in his Pack Hall was intolerable.

It was as not simply his pride as a host which had suffered injury. Nor even were his actions driven primarily by his concern for the young Omegá who had been so slighted.

The act of offence that Ophriel really could not let lie was that Castiel had approached a Dias on which two Omegáres were present and had not only offended one of them by speaking but had equally offended the other by not even acknowledging their presence.

Castiel had, effectively, blanked Daniel in his own home.

And it was that which was the overwhelming reason for Ophriel refusing to let the matter drop.

Ophriel didn't think Castiel was the kind of Grandé who would deliberately overreact to a challenge, but Primá rage was an instinctual reaction that drew a primal response from even the most reasonable of men. Castiel's character might, under the circumstances, have little or no bearing on his reaction.

However, satisfied that his will was in order and Daniel's future was secure, Ophriel marched to Castiel's quarters, knocked politely for admittance, spoke pleasantly to Meg when she opened the door and invited him inside, then calmly walked up to his Grandé and punched him in the face.

~

The atmosphere in Daniel's apartment was not much better.

Having sat and typed a series of additional phrases into his tablet, Dean was currently running the batteries down on the device by tapping his stylus at random on the document, repeating a steady, succinct commentary on the Grandé.

# Fucking Bastard . Son of a bitch. Motherfucking whoreson asshole bastard. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. Cunting asshole.#

And numerous other variations on the same theme, all expressed in the pleasant if somewhat metallic tones of the tablet's 'voice'. The tableau would have been rather funny, had Dean's distress not been so genuine.

Daniel had tried pointing out that Castiel's spluttered apology and rapid exit could possibly have a myriad of explanations other than being an actual rejection. Primáres were, he explained, notoriously bad at facing failure and, undoubtedly, the Grandé would have felt a level of personal responsibility for any harm done to an Omegá under his protection.

Dean had listened politely to Daniel, given due consideration to his argument, nodded his acceptance of the point having possible validity, then had carefully typed;

# I don't care #

And, since he then immediately returned to his diatribe of profanities, it was quite clear to Daniel that Dean wasn't saying he wasn't hurt by what Castiel had done; he was saying he didn't care _why_ Castiel had done it and had no interest whatsoever in listening to any reasons or justifications.

Whether the Grandé had caused offence deliberately or inadvertently, Dean's sense of offence remained the same. His judgement on Castiel had been passed and he was not willing to be swayed.

And since Daniel respected Dean's decision on the matter (and was feeling pretty much the same way too, anyway) the older Omegá decided that anger was probably a healthier expression of emotion than weeping, anyway.

~

Meg's only regret at seeing her husband knocked clear off his feet by Ophriel's fist was that it hadn't been her own knuckles that had made contact.

It was actually pretty good timing, really, since she had been yelling her furious disappointment at Castiel from the moment she'd raced after him and she doubted her voice would have been up for much more haranguing since he seemed too shell-shocked to argue back. It was pretty exhausting maintaining a monologue of chastisement when the object of your ire failed to defend themselves.

In fact, the only concern she felt at the moment Ophriel's fury applied itself to Castiel's face was that the two Primáres might descend into a full-blown battle. Meg couldn't even imagine the carnage if the two Primáres both snapped into primal rage but she had little doubt it would end up with one of them literally having his throat ripped open.

A Primá attacking his own Grandé, regardless of provocation, was no insignificant event. Castiel was virtually obliged to respond to the challenge to his authority with swift and possibly fatal retaliation. Which made Ophriel either incredibly brave or intensely stupid, or possibly both.

Undoubtedly, Castiel was physically capable of defeating Ophriel. Although the older Primá had the benefit of experience, Castiel had youth and a more physically imposing build on his side. Besides, just as Alpha strength was more preternatural than physical, so Grandé Alphas had access to a more primal source of power. It was no small feat for a Primá to attempt to elevate himself by defeating a Grandé in personal combat. It was, indeed, the near impossibility of surviving such an encounter that had led to the tradition of the Grandé role being a mantle passed through inheritance rather than combat. The Packs had simply tired of being weakened by the ignominious deaths of so many Primáres seeking, and failing, to advance themselves.

So, after the first momentary satisfaction of seeing someone knock a little sense into her husband, Meg's next primary emotion was fear. Not so much for Ophriel, whom she barely knew, but for Daniel. Unaware that Ophriel had made careful provisions for his Bride in the event of his untimely demise, all Meg could think of in that moment was that Daniel was possibly about to be widowed and everyone knew that most widowed Omagáres of Daniel's generation chose suicide rather than to face an uncertain future.

Which was why, with no hesitation whatsoever, she leapt forward and inserted her tiny body between the two Primáres so that by the time Castiel had surged to his feet with a roar of offended fury it was she who was directly in the way of any retaliating strike, rather than Ophriel.

"YOU DESERVED THAT!" she yelled, trembling in the face of Castiel's blazing rage but too furious to flinch from the obvious danger he represented in that moment. "But it's all about your pride, isn't it? So go ahead and widow Daniel, you stupid bastard, and your ego can have _two_ Omegá victims today."

For a brief second or two, she thought his fury was too great for words alone to penetrate and his eyes continued to flare with cold preternatural luminous blue that promised a strike of vengeful retaliation against both Ophriel and herself.

Then the light flickered and died and Castiel shuddered and seemed to shrink in on himself, his hands unfurling from fists and flattening into a peaceful gesture of calm.

He took a deep, shuddering breath and released the last of his anger with a defeated sigh and when he spoke he addressed both of them. "Forgive me. Your chastisement of my earlier behaviour was warranted."

Emboldened, and undoubtedly relieved, by Castiel's verbal contrition, Ophriel stepped forward and gently, but firmly, eased Meg aside so she was no longer a barrier between them. Then, satisfied of her safety, he addressed the Grandé:

"I will never stand by and see disrespect shown to an Omegá under my roof. Your action tonight offended _two_ Omegáres and that is unforgivable."

"I intended no offence," Castiel protested. "Quite the opposite. I couldn't bear the thought of Dean being forced to accept my greeting. Neither could I show respect to Daniel and not to Dean, so... I thought it best to withdraw."

"You mean run away," Meg interjected.

Ophriel blinked slowly. He frowned forbiddingly at his Grandé for a moment, his austere features cold and unforgiving as he judged the young Primá silently.

Castiel flushed and shuffled awkwardly like a young embarrassed pup under the older Primá's glowering disapproval.

And, suddenly, shockingly, the older Primá laughed.

Not a snigger or a chuckle but a full-bodied hearty laugh that seemed so innocuous coming from such a severe looking man that both Castiel and Meg exchanged a panicked confused look of temporary truce.

"Oh dear," Ophriel said eventually, wiping his eyes where literal tears of mirth had formed. "Oh dear me. What a pickle. You silly, stupid pup. You've really screwed the pooch on this one, haven't you?"

Meg rolled her eyes. "As I was telling him when you arrived."

"Hah," Ophriel said. "I misunderstood the situation. I'm still glad I hit you, though. You deserved it and hopefully it's knocked some sense into you because I'm not the only one who misunderstood your motivations," he added pointedly.

Castiel looked satisfyingly horrified.

"Yup," Ophriel said. "You successfully gave everyone the impression that you couldn't even bear to be in the same room as that beautiful boy. Your public rejection of him is the talk of the Pack. As a result he is, I understand, scouring a thesaurus for words to adequately describe you. I assure you, none of them are flattering."

"But I didn't, I wouldn't... he's... he's perfect. Gorgeous. Magnificent..." Castiel  
stuttered.

"Armed," Ophriel interrupted. "That ceremonial dagger on his hip isn't just 'jewellery', you know. I suspect you might find it buried in your eye socket if you should bump into him in the near future. He is _extremely_ displeased with you at the moment."

"I need to see him. Apologise. Explain myself, " Castiel said.

"Do you now?" Ophriel asked, his eyes thoughtful. "The problem, my Grandé, is what you are saying is that you are sorry you hurt his feelings but what I am _hearing_ is me, me, me... what _you_ need. What _you_ want."

" But I...." Castiel began, then trailed off as he realised he was proving Ophriel's point. "What should I do?" he asked, humbly.

"Daniel has been my bride for over sixty years," Ophriel said, "and over those years there have, sadly, been many occasions on which we have failed to see eye to eye. There have been many misunderstandings. On every occasion the fault has been accepted by me and I have apologised. I would suggest you follow the same pattern of behaviour and always accept that the burden of apology lies upon _you_."

"But I didn't mean to hurt his feelings. I was trying to..."

"It doesn't matter," Ophriel interrupted. "It's irrelevant. Explaining yourself is not apology. It is justification. It is, truthfully, the antithesis of apology. You want him to see things from your point of view so that he validates your behaviour by forgiving it. I don't know Dean, but if he is anything like Daniel he will spit in your eye if you have the audacity to try imposing that shit on him. All you can do if you truly want his forgiveness is show him by word and deed how very sorry you are for causing the misunderstanding. If you try hard enough and he is gracious enough then, possibly, eventually, he may choose to ask you to explain yourself."

Castiel's face twisted with indecision. His natural instincts fought against the idea that this wasn't something he could just 'fix'. The idea of a gradual campaign towards earning an eventual forgiveness didn't suit his nature at all. But, then, as Ophriel had said, this wasn't about what _he_ needed, was it? "So what should I do?"

"Grovel," Meg suggested archly. "Lots of grovelling and sucking up and following him around like a sad kicked puppy, and flowers probably. Lots of flowers. Oh and clothes, maybe. I bet he needs lots of new clothes. Though you probably need to be careful not to insult him by making out you want him to dress to please _you_ or some such crap, so maybe just arrange a line of credit for him with a designer and let him choose for himself. And Crowley."

"What about Crowley?"

"Give Crowley to Dean. And a couple of Beta maids. Since you've fucked this up so badly that Dean's unlikely to agree to even accepting chaperoned visits by you for God alone knows how long, let alone mating you anytime in the near future, he'll have to stay as a lone guest in this Pack Hall without a single Beta handmaiden or Alpha guard to his name. Unless, of course, he gets wooed by another Primá who will offer him those benefits sooner. I can see that being a particular lure for him if he's stuck on Daniel's sofa for much longer. Just the idea of having a bed of his own might tempt him to look for a husband sooner and there are a lot of unmated Primáres for him to choose from who haven't just insulted him in front of an entire Pack."

Castiel growled, his eyes flashing jealous blue fire.

"I could solve that by providing Dean with a personal apartment of his own here if he had servants and his own First Alpha guard," Ophriel allowed, his eyes twinkling in amusement at Meg's suggestion since he knew perfectly well she was aware that Daniel's apartment was huge and Dean was certainly not sleeping on a 'sofa'.

"An Omegá can't have a first Alpha," Castiel protested.

"Well, I thought the same," Ophriel agreed. "But Jophiel, having tired of even trying to control Joshua, has recently gifted him a pet Alpha of his very own and when the Southern Primáres questioned him doing so, it was your own mother, Castiel, who produced some ancient parchments proving it was quite commonplace historically for the Queens to have at least one personal Alpha guard. So Joshua now has a 'Queen's Alpha'."

"I saw them arrive," Meg agreed. "Joshua's pet Randolph is a huge musclebound bear of an Alpha and Joshua leashes him with a chain around his balls that Joshua attaches to his own harness. So tiny little Joshua just skips along all carefree with this big lumbering Alpha staggering after him like a big obedient puppy, always on hand to act as a convenient lap whenever Joshua wants to sit down."

Castiel shook his head in bewilderment. "And Jophiel doesn't care?"

"Joshua had begun to favour Randolph's cock as a mobile peg so much that Jophiel ruined his ass completely in response. Randolph's anal sphincter is so damaged that he either has to be permanently plugged or diapered anyway unless he stays away from Joshua long enough to let the damage repair itself. It seems the option didn't interest him. Faced with the choice between being demoted to Second Alpha for several months or living with an ass so loose he can't even control his bowels, Randolph still wanted the honour of being Joshua's preferred toy.

"So Randolph just staggers around now with a number three peg lodged in his ass and effectively fucks 'himself' every time he sits down to let Joshua bounce on him. Jophiel's pride is satisfied by _that_ thought and his own cock gets a rest so everyone is happy," Ophriel explained.

"Including Randolph," Meg pointed out, " judging by the adoring way he looks at Joshua as he's being dragged around. Still, most Alphas enjoy being sexually humiliated so he's probably in hog heaven being so publicly abused by his Queen."

Castiel nodded. He could see how the arrangement would work for the three of them.

"But Dean isn't a Queen," he pointed out. "An unmated Omegá can't sit on an Alpha like that. I struggle to believe there's any historical precedent for a _Princess's Alpha_ ," he chuckled.

"It's a scandalous thought," Ophriel agreed. "Though I fundamentally disagree with the idea that an Omegá 'can't' do _anything_. It is my understanding that Omegáres can do no wrong, Castiel, or am I out of touch with some new fangled fashion. Has your generation decided to rewrite scripture whilst I wasn't paying attention?"

"I didn't mean it like that," Castiel protested. "I'm not saying it's 'wrong', obviously, just that it wouldn't be seen as 'right'."

"By whom?" Ophriel asked, with interest.

"Yes," Meg agreed. "Pray tell, CP, because this seems to be the day you are causing a lot of accidental misunderstandings so I'd hate us to leave this conversation with the idea that the reason you aren't prepared to let poor Dean at least have the independence of his own living space is the fact you won't provide him with an Alpha guard of his own, just in case he makes the choice to use a flesh peg instead of a rubber one for his own comfort."

"Actually, you make a really good point," Ophriel agreed. "Obviously I have no reason to know whether Dean would be interested in that kind of thing anyway. He's definitely no Joshua. But the bottom line is that obviously he can do whatever he likes with his own Alpha. I can discuss the issue with Daniel and see whether he has any suggestions of suitable Alphas to offer for Dean's selection, regardless of whether he wants them simply as a guard or for other purposes too. I would have thought, Castiel, if you truly intend to woo him, that you'd prefer the Alpha to be from Detroit since I imagine Dean might be influenced by the Pack loyalties of his pet Alpha. But if you are fundamentally opposed to the idea in principle, I can't see Dean choosing you as a mate anyway. He doesn't seem the type of Omegá who'd appreciate a mate incapable of understanding any Omegá's decisions are his own to make."

Castiel snarled with irritation."Fine," he snapped. "Give him Crowley and some maids. Hell, give him a fucking harem if he wants one. And find me the number of a local florist."


	89. Chapter Eighty Four

"Did someone die?" Joshua asked, looking around Daniel's parlour in confusion.

"Just someone's ego, I believe," Daniel replied with a careless shrug. "Can't you smell the faint overtone of Primá desperation in this embarrassing largesse?"

"And his wallet died too, from the looks of things," Joshua suggested, a little gleefully. "What did Ophriel do this time? It looks like a florist shop threw up in here."

"Oh, these aren't mine," Daniel said, waving dismissively at the opulent floral displays draped over every available surface. "Mine are in my bedroom. Two huge bouquets of Dahlias, so I may possibly choose to overlook being slighted yesterday. I do so love Dahlias. Or perhaps I'll sulk a little longer and see if I can score as big a stash as Dean has, because all of _these_ displays are Dean's. They were delivered this morning. I believe his admirer must have bought every lavender rose in the state. The other primary flowers are gloxinia and hyacinth."

"Well, I know purple hyacinths mean 'forgive me', because Jophiel buys them for me all the time," Joshua laughed. "And, yes, I agree that sulking usually pays off handsomely. But what do the roses and the gloxy things mean?"

Daniel grinned conspiratorially, "We looked them up on the internet. They both mean 'love at first sight'."

"Awww," Joshua said, "that's so sweet."

" _I_ thought so, but Dean performed a whole 'I'm going to vomit at the cheesiness' routine and stomped off to his room in a huff," Daniel laughed. "But he didn't refuse them and he _did_ take one particularly pretty vase of roses with him as he stormed off, so I don't think he's quite as unaffected as he's pretending."

"I heard what happened," Joshua confided. "And Jophiel broke fast with his little brother this morning; and when he returned, he told me Castiel has one heck of a shiner."

"I am led to believe Ophriel explained the error of his ways to our Grandé, last night," Daniel agreed placidly.

"Poor Dean," Joshua murmured. "I was hoping to meet him this morning. We really need to discuss some details of tomorrow before Mateo gets here and gets his claws of influence into him. Otherwise, instead of the Majeure acting as a tempering influence on the Primáres , I suspect the whole thing will become a passionate Latina bloodbath. I've heard that Broadway is lit up with burning crucifixes most full moons as the Confederacy roots out and eliminates the last Ablest sympathisers in their midst and Raphael has begun enacting the moon ceremony in Times Square."

"By the holy mother," Daniel breathed. "I never dreamed I'd see it in my lifetime. I see Chuck's influence everywhere these days. Though I agree that performing the moon ceremony by the light of burning Ablest priests is probably an additional nicety added by Mateo. I do find that particular Queen to be exhaustingly dramatic."

"So for avoidance of unnecessary drama tomorrow, I think you and I should discuss everything with Dean today before Mateo arrives," Joshua suggested, demonstrating far more common sense than most people generally accorded to him.

"I will call for him," Daniel promised, waving at one of his Beta servants to attend to it. "I simply wasn't sure whether you'd be attending me alone this morning, and I didn't want Dean to feel his sanctuary could ever be breached by anyone who might make him uncomfortable."

Joshua looked confused for a moment, then laughed self-depreciatingly as understanding dawned. "I know I have a reputation for being a bit spoilt and thoughtless on occasion, Daniel, but I _do_ perform most of my excesses simply to deliberately shock Jophiel. I'd never deliberately disrespect the sanctity of another Omegá's private quarters. I told Randy to wait for me outside your door. He's not even allowed to talk to your guards. I told him to just kneel there and look pretty.

"It's not like I need to be guarded inside your apartment. He can do his job perfectly well at your front door. Besides, he enjoys being abandoned and ignored sometimes. I once made him wait for me so long he ended up wetting himself in the middle of our Pack Hall, but he still just knelt there in his own piss and waited for me to give him permission to move. I actually think he enjoyed the embarrassment. Alphas are weird, aren't they?"

"They're definitely the oddest of the designations," Daniel agreed. "When we first mated, Ophriel had a First Alpha who used to follow me around all day like a creeper. It was disturbing but oddly harmless at first. I couldn't so much as drop a handkerchief without him springing up from wherever he was lurking to pick it up for me, before immediately scuttling away to hide again without ever saying a single word. It was really peculiar yet strangely amusing, so I admit I went through a period of being quite terribly clumsy."

"Oh, you are really quite stunning, aren't you?" Joshua exclaimed, jumping up in excitement as Dean entered the room. "I wasn't sure what to expect, to be honest because everyone kept saying you were really, really 'big' and, well, I thought they meant," Joshua lowered his voice to a whisper "fat".

Daniel snorted with laughter. "Sorry," he apologised to Dean.

Dean attempted to glare at them, but his twitching lips betrayed his own amusement at the comment.

"But Castiel told Jophiel you were 'magnificent' this morning, and I see what he meant now," Joshua continued.

Dean frowned repressively, all traces of humour abruptly gone.

"We are not speaking _that_ name," Daniel advised Joshua sagely. "That name is not to be mentioned within these walls. There are, however, a number of adjectives Dean has chosen to use as pronouns for that individual. You may pick one at your leisure. Most are nicely succinct but I personally admit liking the lyrical properties of 'Motherfucking Cocksucker' myself."

He smiled benignly.

"Ohhh, show me the list," Joshua squealed, snatching at the proffered print-out. He read through it slowly, his fingers tracing each word and his mouth forming each sound as he went along. It was immediately apparent that although he _could_ read, it wasn't anything he was skilled or practiced in. Joshua's reading ability seemed barely more than third grade. Dean was abruptly forced to appreciate how his own situation, as terrible as it was, would have been virtually intolerable if he was illiterate.

"I like this one best. Cun..tee...bol...ucks," Joshua decided eventually, "Cuntybollocks."

"Inventively florid," Daniel agreed. "And flows quite nicely on the tongue."

Dean just smirked.

"Well, at least 'Cuntybollocks' has an eye as purple as the flowers he sent you, Dean, so be assured that his regret is quite sincere this morning. Not to mention horrifically expensive."

Dean shrugged nonchalantly, but his smirk deepened regardless.

"Daniel was just telling me about some weird, creeper First Alpha that Ophriel used to have," Joshua confided, tapping the seat next to him in encouragement for Dean to sit down and join them.

# How weird? # Dean asked, when he was seated and able to tap out the question.

"I woke up unexpectedly early one morning and found him in my dressing room, wearing one of my gowns and masturbating himself. I assure you, it was not a pretty picture. He definitely didn't have the figure for it and the effect was further ruined by _both_ of his rather substantial hairy beards. Ophriel was so horrified he burned every single one of my gowns, just in case, and had to buy me an entire new wardrobe. I didn't mind terribly as the House of Dior had just opened its doors and they tripped over themselves to capture my loyalty. Offered me a huge discount for the publicity coup but even so it was a horrendously costly exercise.

"Poor Ophriel was already in hock to the eyeballs paying off my Bride price at the time, so I'm sure the extravagance hurt him, but to this day he's never complained at the expense. I truly believe dear Ophriel would literally rather starve than ever deprive me of what he believes I deserve."

# What happened to the Alpha? #

"Well that was the weirdest part of the story. Ophriel sentenced him to either castration or three months on the barrack rack, servicing the lowest ranked Alphas and, every day, he placed himself on the rack to be available for twelve hours, since the mechanism locks on a timer. Then, on day ninety one he turned up and got on the rack again and, though he was then stuck there for the day, someone was kind enough to point out to him that his sentence was actually over. But the next day he went back again. That was over fifty years ago and, to the best of my knowledge, he's still there, turning up every day without fail."

"Wow," Joshua said, his eyes wide with astonishment. "And I thought Randolph was a sick puppy!"

"Well I can't deny a level of sexual perversion can be useful, sometimes," Daniel laughed. "I definitely think the morale of our lowest level Alphas is improved by having such an eager and available barrack whore."

"I was thinking that might be an appropriate sentence for the Alphas who abused Dean," Joshua suggested. "Since they're all teens and only assaulted him twice outside of rut rage, they are still potentially redeemable if they're brought into a Pack. I think a month each for each assault, and we could spread them amongst different Pack Halls to ensure they are well used for the entirety of their sentences. If two months as a barracks whore doesn't teach them to keep their own cocks in their pants in future then nothing will."

"What do you think?" Daniel asked Dean.

# Explain rack to me? #

Daniel pondered for a moment, then said, "I suppose to explain the rack, I need to tell you a little about the way Packs work. You've probably already realised that we don't share the Beta attitudes towards sex. It's perfectly normal and natural to us to embrace a level of lusty enthusiasm that Free Betas find quite shocking.

"The consequence of that free and open attitude to the casual expression of sexual desire is that we simply don't have any true cultural provision for handling the concept of rape. We have a strict hierarchy, in which it is accepted that power exchange is handled sexually and if, for example, a third alpha is upset by being bent over by a second alpha, he doesn't cry 'rape', he simply proceeds to bend a fourth Alpha over in turn and immediately feels better about the situation.

"The Free Betas consider it a culture of rape. We don't. The only situation in which we even understand 'rape' as a concept is if the hierarchy of power is breached. So, for instance, if a third alpha mounted a second alpha, that would be considered 'rape', unless it was done by clear mutual agreement, but a third alpha does not have to specifically agree to being mounted by a second alpha because his acceptance of his position in the hierarchy has already accorded all the necessary permissions to any higher ranked Alpha. Does that make sense?"

Dean nodded.

"Where we have a problem, legally, is that we have a fundamental belief in the idea of retribution and restitution requiring the idea of an eye for an eye or, specifically where sexually misdemeanours are concerned, a rape for a rape. The idea is fine in principle but who on earth would we ask to perform that punishment? We don't have any willing rapists in our Packs. Anyone with the proclivity to behave in such a fashion would have been weeded out and dealt with long before they might be called upon to 'rape' on command.

"So a lot of our most brutal remedies are applied through necessity rather than choice. The Free Beta culture creates miscreants that Pack Law is ill equipped to deal with. For instance, the Betas who all conspired to cause Claire to be raped so many times were, by law, sentenced to receive an equal amount of brutal sexual penetration but we had no way to actually do it to them. We don't have armies of horny Alphas willing to use their cocks as instruments of justice. Neither do teen Alphas in the Packs suffer from rut rage.

"Consequently, we are frequently forced to apply symbolic punishments instead. The guilty are usually impaled, anally or vaginally, and simply left to die. And for the several days it takes for them to expire, we trust they certainly feel satisfyingly 'raped' by the process. For sexual misdemeanours that don't necessarily deserve execution, we use the rack. Because, as I said, we don't have a culture in which rape is acceptable even as a punishment, the rack is a quite peculiar device in that it can only be chosen voluntarily by those punished on it.

"So the simple, straightforward sentence given for minor sexual deviance is castration. It isn't a docking procedure, simply a removal of the testes. It is a quick and easy solution that effectively prevents reoccurrence. The problem, of course, is that the majority of Alphas would rather die than have their balls cut off, so it makes the punishment inequitable in their case. Whilst most Beta males in that situation accept being gelded and continue with their lives, a gelded Alpha usually commits suicide.

"The rack, therefore, believe it or not, was designed to be a more _merciful_ solution that an Alpha male could chose so that their punishment was survivable. Any judge passing a sentence of castration may choose to offer the mercy of the rack as an alternative. A sentence of time is set, and for the period of that sentence the guilty must place themselves on the device every morning. They must prepare and grease their anus, making it clear they are volunteering to be penetrated, then voluntarily place their scrotum inside a mechanism that bites down and holds them in place for twelve hours and, during that time, they offer their ass freely for the use of anyone who might wish to avail themselves. At any point during every twelve hour shift they have the option to change their mind by pressing the ball lock mechanism and it will release them," Daniel explained.

"By severing their balls and cauterising the wound," Joshua pointed out.

"Indeed," Daniel agreed. "Because by dismounting the rack, they are choosing to accept the judgement of castration rather than the 'mercy' of the rack. We do obviously understand that it may seem to be semantics to claim the rack is therefore not an instrument of 'rape', but it not only successfully overcomes any moral issues to the lower Alphas availing themselves of the offered hole, but actually offers a redemptive punishment more in line with Beta Law than Pack Law."

"Almost every Alpha who has spent time on the rack has evolved to become a genuinely useful Pack member later," Joshua agreed.

# And the others? #

Daniel shrugged. "Some people can't be saved from themselves. The Pack considers those individuals a disease that needs to be culled. Anyone offered the mercy of the rack and still failing to sufficiently repent is just impaled in the pit and left to the judgement of the All-Father."

"Which brings us back to tomorrow," Joshua said. "Because you're an Omegá and the Alphas who mounted you were under the influence of alcohol rather than rut rage, they will be tried. The abuse and disrespect on Shab-e Yalda might have won them castration or the rack but actual rape of an Omegá is usually not considered a matter that can be addressed by 'corrective' punishment. In a Primá conclave they would inevitably be docked, peared, impaled and left in the pit for the second offence. If that's what you want to happen, we'll support you, of course. It's probably just me being all new mama that's making me think of them as badly influenced and manipulated pups who might possibly be redeemable. Obviously, the choice is yours Dean. I just wanted you to know all the options before Mateo arrived. He's European, very traditional and more likely to suggest something like covering them in honey and letting them get eaten alive by fire ants."

"It's definitely an option we could consider for Azazel," Daniel said. "Lucifer put him on a flight here late last night so I expect he'll be here very soon."

# What's paired? #

"Oh, it's 'pear', like the fruit," Daniel corrected.

"Because that's what it looks like," Joshua explained. "A big metal pear on a handle. But if you turn the handle, it opens up like a flower. It can be used as a gag or a peg. It's usually used in Conclaves to open someone up so they can be impaled more easily."

Dean looked a bit green at the thought.

"Pack justice is brutal," Daniel agreed, "And a fair amount of it will be applied in situ, rather than off-stage, so you might prefer not to attend. No one will think less of you if you would rather not watch. We just want you to fully understand before making your decision."

# What about the Betas who set up the thing in the Park? Do they get tried too? #

"I understand that Ophriel has managed to arrest five of the City Councillors. The others have fled but we will eventually track them down. They'll be charged with heresy, rather than with your assault, simply because we're legally on absolutely solid ground with the heresy charge so there's no wriggle room whatsoever and Ophriel can't bear the idea of any of them somehow avoiding an actual death sentence. There may be no actual proof of their complicity in your abuse on stage, but the fact they held the ceremony in the first place is inarguable."

"Heretics are always burned," Joshua explained. "The only decision we'll need to make in their case is the method by which it is done. You can go with the traditional pyre, or roast them inside a barrel or do Raphael's thing which is strap them on a metal seat covered in tiny spikes that pierce their buttocks and thighs, and set a small fire underneath to heat the metal spikes which cooks them really slowly from all the places they are skewered. It's pretty gruesome to listen to, unless you gag them with the pears and, worst of all, it leaves the most horrible stinky smell for days. That's why Mateo prefers to just crucify heretics outside and then set fire to them. He says he hates his Pack Hall smelling like a pork barbecue."

Dean went pale, clasped a hand across his mouth, turned and raced from the room.

"Oops," Joshua muttered. "Was it something I said?"

Daniel just shook his head despairingly, then went in search of the youngest Omegá to see if he could be of assistance.

He found Dean, unsurprisingly, on his knees in a bathroom, throwing up.

"I'm sorry, sweetling," he said, rubbing Dean's back as he vomited. "We actually forget how vicious we are until forced to look at ourselves through the eyes of an innocent. The whole purpose of this being a Force Majeure Conclave is that Joshua is mistaken, really. As the ultimate arbiters in this conclave, we have the right to overturn any judgement. We have an obligation to protect the Packs, of course, so our mercy must be tempered by our responsibility. But, for instance, we could order that the heretics are put to death swiftly and mercifully and then merely have their bodies burned symbolically.

"The question you have to ask yourself, I suppose, is why Pack Law is so brutal by design. The answer, from my point of view, is that it works. There has not been a single charge of heresy within a Pack in centuries. It simply doesn't happen. The punishment is so terrible that the act is simply unthinkable to any sane individual. In my memory, the only recipients of such terrible justice have been from Free Beta society and it is done so publicly that we pray with every conclave that it will stand as sufficient warning that it need never be repeated.

"But still they don't all learn. We believe that lessening the punishment would act as encouragement rather than deterrence. But perhaps we are wrong. Perhaps mercy would be a better lesson. Who knows for sure?"

Dean rose unsteadily to his feet and Daniel took a damp cloth and gently wiped his face. "Do you feel any better? Would you like to lie down for a while?"

Dean firmed his shoulders. He met Daniel's worried gaze and shook his head firmly, then reached for the tablet he had dropped to the floor.

# I'm fine #, he wrote. # Just adjusting my perceptions #

Daniel nodded solemnly. "I imagine you are," he agreed. "Just remember, whatever else happens, that you are Omegá. You live in this Pack world but you are not 'of' it. You step along a narrow path offering a bridge between the brutality of the mundane and the wonderment of the divine. At any point you may step off that path entirely and leave the Packs to wallow in their mundanity without you. Even if you choose to attend the conclave, you may leave it any point. None may question or judge that choice.

"You are being offered the choice to participate in the judgements. You have no obligation to do so. You do not even have any obligation to consider the consequences or implications to others of those judgements. You have an opportunity to send a message and a lesson to other would be transgressors. You have the right to offer mercy instead and let future events happen in their own time.

"Ultimately, Dean, the only one who can sit in judgement of you is yourself. Answer to your own conscience. There is no other arbiter of import. In fact, perhaps you shouldn't even listen to me," Daniel laughed.

# I may not always agree. But I will always listen.#

Daniel smiled. "I can ask for no more."

When they returned to the parlour, Joshua was waiting for them with a peculiar expression on his face that was an odd mix of excitement and worry.

"What's happened?" Daniel asked.

"Jophiel just texted me. I'm not sure I should say what about," he said, with a pointed look in Dean's direction.

Daniel reached for the handset Joshua was offering and read the text for himself.

"Ahhh, I see," he said, then turned his attention to Dean who was looking pissed off at the perceived slight. "Joshua's worried he might upset your stomach again with this news. He's trying to be considerate, not insulting."

Joshua nodded his agreement of Daniel's assessment.

# Tell me #

Daniel rubbed his temples fretfully as he struggled for the right words. "You know we've been expecting the return of Azazel Al'asfar for trial? Well, it appears we were a little late communicating our wishes to Lucifer and he'd already been tried and sentenced in South America by the time we asked for him to be returned."

# He's dead? #

Daniel's face scrunched in response. "Not exactly. There's not a lot left of him to put on trial though, and it doesn't appear possible for him to be questioned as to the whereabouts of his brother, unfortunately."

Dean frowned.

# But he's alive? #

"After a fashion," Daniel prevaricated.

"It's called 'worming'," Joshua said, helpfully.

# Tell me #

Ten minutes later, as Dean was back in the bathroom losing whatever was left of his breakfast, one of Daniel's servants announced that Mateo had arrived.

"Oh joy," Daniel muttered under his breath. Forget more Dahlias. The only thing he could imagine might improve his day was a stiff drink or three.

Instead, he sighed and braced himself for the explosive arrival of Raphael's excitable Bride.


	90. Chapter Eighty Five

Dean had no recollection of drinking a magic potion or tumbling through a wormhole or even tripping into a rabbit hole, so he was pretty certain he was still living in his own reality.

But it certainly didn't feel that way.

In less than 24 hours his whole worldview had been tilted on its axis and very little of what he had believed to be true had turned out to be real at all. He had heard Crowley's warning about a dark alien underbelly lurking under the pleasant face of the Packs and his conversations with Daniel and Joshua had definitely revealed some of the horrific realities of Pack life.

Yet even his perfectly justified, in his opinion, feelings of disgust at hearing about impalements and rape racks and roasting people alive and even godforsaken 'worming' (which definitely seemed like it belonged firmly inside a horror movie, rather than being an actual thing that genuinely could be done to a human being) were tempered somewhat by the straightforward way they had been described to him by the two beautiful Omegáres. Had either of them revelled or delighted in the practices they described, he doubted he would have been capable of even attempting to understand their point of view. But neither Omegá had portrayed the tortures as anything other than unfortunate 'necessary' evils the Packs were driven to, primarily by the Free Betas.

And Dean supposed they had a point. If the scales of justice were forced to weigh between the harm suffered by a rut house Omegá versus the execution by impalement of the person who allowed the Omegá to suffer that harm, perhaps even a terrible, agonising death over several days was still little penance for the literal years an Omegá could spend being raped fifty or more times a day.

Dean imagined that any one of those Omegáres, given the opportunity to cast judgement at a conclave, would find even such a terrible sentence to be a paltry offer of restitution for their own sufferings.

So did he even have a right to feel disgusted by the idea? Was the fact he had been lucky enough to avoid the worst experiences of being an Omegá in Beta Land really a good enough reason to feel all prissy princess about the way the Pack chose to express judgement on the guilty?

After all, he had not escaped Beta Land unscathed himself and every time his mouth and hands and Flores refused to do his bidding, he was forcibly reminded of the harm he had himself suffered. Though he wasn't even sure he wasn't making a mountain out of a molehill anyway. Despite Alastair's dire predictions of it taking months for his hands to work, in only a couple of days, the worst of the trembling weakness in his hands had already abated. He was having so little difficulty grasping the tablet already that he could imagine he might even have regained enough dexterity be able to use the stylus with his fingers within a couple of weeks.

So Alastair had fucked up completely or he, himself, was healing far more rapidly than anticipated. Either way, clearly he wasn't judging the current situation from a position of sufficient personal harm to allow a need for vengeance to overwhelm his instinctive horror at the brutality of Pack justice.

But unless two wrongs indeed made a right, Dean was pretty certain his instinctive revulsion for the idea was valid.

No one had more reason to wish Azazel punished than himself. Azazel directly and indirectly had been the source of most of Dean's misery. Dean's mutilations had been orchestrated by the Beta, as had his rapes. Sam was languishing in another country because of Azazel's manipulations and Dean's was convinced, one way or another, that death of his parents and Bobby could be lain to some extent at the Beta's door.

Even so, the knowledge of what had been done to Azazel was so horrifying that Dean couldn't believe that anyone could see it as an _appropriate_ action.

Yet, as Crowley had pointed out, Dean had been raised to think like a Free Beta, with the morality of a Free Beta, so it was hardly surprising that he was struggling so hard to see the situation through the same lens as the Packs.

It was impossible to judge a culture fairly from the perspective of a totally different one; when values and morals were so completely at odds with each other, yet somehow made perfect, reasonable sense within each of the cultures they were embedded in. Dean was definitely a stranger in a strange land, picking his way cautiously through a maze of contradictory scenarios in which he could see both the Betas and the Packs as equally victims and monsters.

He really wished Crowley was there to discuss the situation with him. The sarcastic little Alpha had experienced life in both worlds enough that he was the only confidant Dean believed might truly be able to offer some genuine clarity of thought on the issue.

Daniel had said he was walking a knife edge between the mundane world and the divine. Dean thought the true reality at that moment was that he was traversing the border between two totally alien cultures, the Beta World and the Pack World, and finding both as horrific as each other in their own way.

And just as perspective changed a viewer's sympathy when watching wildlife documentaries, so he could see how his own sympathies could skew so easily in either direction depending on which side of the knife edge he was balanced at the time of encountering each individual situation.

It was the best analogy he could imagine. When watching a documentary following a herd of prey animals, he would always find himself rooting for the beasts the camera was following, praying for their survival, cheering when they somehow avoided a hunting predator and thrilling in their survival. Yet should the following episode have the camera following a Pack of predators, as he saw their tiny, vulnerable, hungry cubs, his loyalties would skew totally in favour of the hunting mother and he would groan with worry and despair should she fail to capture the prey her babies so desperately needed.

It was all a matter of perspective, wasn't it? Even in something as innocuous as watching a television documentary, his loyalties and moral judgements were fluid rather than fixed.

So perhaps that was his way to survive in the Pack. To take to heart what Daniel had said about him being _in_ the Pack but not _of_ the Pack.

He was, perhaps, just an observer of the Pack culture, no more a member of it than he had ever truly been a member of the Free Beta society he had been born into. His camera was now following not the prey but the predators. His sympathies were naturally twisting to see the situation from their perspective. He wasn't validating them or necessarily judging them as better or worse. He was simply observing the situation from their viewpoint for this 'episode' and, like a wildlife camera man, his role was to bear witness not to make moralistic judgements.

Maybe it was like trying to speak a foreign language. It was possible to stumble through conversations by constantly translating words in his head back and forth from the alien tongue to the one he found more natural, but true fluency couldn't be achieved without learning to actually _think_ in that new language.

To truly understand the Packs, he needed to speak Pack and think Pack and, until he could do that, he certainly was in no position to 'judge' the Packs.

And, with that decided, Dean splashed water on his face and smoothed down his gown with hands that shook far less than he would have expected, and with steps that were a little unsteady but definitely far more confident than should have been possible considering how much his throat must have been irritated by his vomiting, Dean returned to Daniel's parlour.

~

"I am so pissed," Raphael declared, glowering at the thing that used to be Azazel Al'asfar. "I had a whole list of potential punishments ready to suggest, and not one of them even scraped the barrel of this level of sheer fucked-up evil. I feel quite inadequate."

After a lot of initial confusion over what to do with the thing after the box had been opened to reveal its contents, Ophriel had instructed one of his Alphas to bring an Omegá seat into the Main Hall, and they had put the 'worm' onto the peg so it could just helplessly sit there like a bizarre artwork, its wide eyes just staring at them in silent horror.

"Well, at least Uncle Lucifer left its eyes and eardrums intact," Jophiel pointed out. "Traditionally, worms are blinded and deafened so they're completely senseless but it's definitely more satisfying that he's just removed the flesh of its ears so it can still hear, and its eyelids so it can't fail to see."

"He's also injected Orexin directly into the worm's spinal fluid at several points," Ophriel's Pack surgeon announced, as he finished reading through the substantial documentation provided as a helpful 'manual' for care of a wormed human. "It prevents the creature attaining a normal sleep cycle or somehow self-inducing a trancelike state that could allow it to escape reality. Except for the sleep it will snatch here and there through sheer exhaustion, it will remain permanently fully awake and aware.

"Of course, the sleep deprivation guarantees the development of a gradual, progressive insanity eventually. But the surgery has been performed with complete masterful precision and, amazingly, I can't find any evidence of any organ damage. In theory, as long as it is fed, and not allowed to develop skin infections, it could be kept alive indefinitely."

"But why?" Ophriel muttered. "What's the point? I'd tire very quickly of having it glowering in the corner as I ate my dinner and I definitely can't see Daniel approving of the idea. He'd find it in very poor taste."

Raphael shrugged. "I'll take it home with me. I imagine Mateo will enjoy playing with it. He'll probably commission an electrified peg to mount it on as a table centrepiece. It's still capable of enough eye-rolling facial expression for Mateo to amuse himself for a while, at least."

"I remain amazed your bride didn't mate with Uncle Lucifer himself," Castiel pointed out. "They always seemed a better personality match."

"Evil little fuckers the pair of them," Raphael agreed easily. "Fortunately for me, Ravan was still fertile when Mateo was looking for a mate. I knew what I was getting with an Omegá from Espaná and I can't say I've ever regretted it. Though I'd never actually turn my back on Mateo when he's having one of his 'dramas'. I'm sure he'd happily stab me in the back when he's in one of those moods." He grinned fondly at the thought.

"I find it peculiar that all of Chuck's sons are drawn to divas," Ophriel said. "Though you, Jophiel, are probably more likely to survive Joshua's way of expressing his passions."

"Well, I'm less likely to be decapitated by a pair of stilettos being flung at my head," Jophiel laughed, "but I'm not sure my heart is going to survive many more years of Joshua's exploits. One of these days he's going to do something so shocking that I'll have a coronary on the spot."

"Do you think Dean will be a diva?" Castiel asked, frowning thoughtfully.

Ophriel smirked. "I have a feeling that when that boy finally finds his feet, he will re-invent the word. He'll turn the world upside down and sideways for whoever is lucky enough to mate him. He won't be a diva. He'll be _the_ Diva. Just imagine one of Mateo's eruptions of rage and then consider the idea that instead of ducking Mateo's tiny little fists, you're facing Dean's."

Raphael threw his head back and laughed whole heartedly. "You should probably take heed and run, little brother. I swear over the years I've faced the world with several black eyes worse than the one you're currently sporting and Mateo is barely five foot high. He's an evil little minx at the best of times. Throw in a bit of PMT and my ass is toast."

"He's got a point," Jophiel agreed. "At least when Joshua is being totally unreasonable, I can simply pick him up and put him on my lap and pet him until he calms down enough to go all purry again. I can't see how that would work if he was bigger than me."

"Hmmmm," Castiel said, unconvinced. "I was of the belief you actually have to bribe him with gifts of pet Alphas."

Jophiel pouted. "It was mom's idea."

Which effectively ended the conversation, since none of them wanted to say anything potentially offensive about Chuck.

~

"It's completely bloody unacceptable," Crowley snarled, furiously. "I am sick and tired of being passed from pillar to post like a regifted unwanted birthday present."

Meg smirked, enjoying Crowley's temper tantrum since he was punctuating every word with a particularly forceful thrust. Since this was the last time she'd enjoy Crowley's personal attention, she wanted the memory to be a satisfying one.

"Well, I could have suggested Benny for the role," she grinned. "If Dean turns out to be a size-queen he'll probably prefer an Alpha with an economy-sized cock."

"There's nothing fucking wrong with my cock," Crowley protested, drawing back enough to ram the point home with vicious force.

"I suppose it's adequate," Meg allowed. "And you have a nice big ball-sac, at least. It's going to look so pretty with a leash around it."

"I am not going to be tugged around a Pack Hall by the balls," Crowley snarled.

"Really?" Meg demanded archly. "Because I can just see it myself, you scuttling after Dean stark bollock naked in the middle of a crowded Pack Hall, with your balls chained and maybe your buttocks paddled so scarlet that your whole ass is just a big hot throbbing ache. On a cold day, maybe Dean will just make you kneel beneath him so he can use your flaming butt cheeks as a foot warmer."

"You cunt," Crowley gasped, coming explosively inside her.

Meg grinned smugly. "You're such a secret perv, Crowley, but I've got your number. You can whine all you like but I know perfectly well the idea of being Dean's personal sex toy is making you pant with excitement. You'd happily let him piss in your face."

"Only in private," Crowley protested. "I'm not into public humiliation."

"Yeah, so says your mouth," Meg snickered. "Your cock is definitely singing from a different hymn sheet."

"Is Castiel serious about this?"

"Well, obviously you're too valuable to the Pack to simply be given away as an Omegá chew toy, so clearly he's hoping and praying that it's only a temporary Pack disassociation. But he's quite serious about your loyalty being transferred. The only way you'll get back to Detroit is if or when Dean chooses to mate Castiel. Maybe he's hoping you'll help influence Dean's decision."

"What about Cain-Crowley?"

"There's no reason at all why you can't work remotely. It's not like you don't have enough minions to do the legwork. You can run your side of the practice from Pierre as easily as you do it here. I'm sure Dean won't even object to you making phone calls whilst he warms his feet on your ass."

"Queen's Alpha, huh?"

"According to Chuck, its a higher hierarchical position than First Alpha. Just imagine it, Crowley. You'll come back here, Benny and Victor will laugh at you being leashed by Dean and you'll respond by bending them both over and giving them a damned good fuck. Priceless," she smirked.

"There is a certain...attractiveness... to the idea," he allowed. "Benny never lets me be on top. Stingy assed bastard."

"Well, you've never exactly complained about being on the bottom, " she pointed out, "but it's still a fair point."

"So we're going straight back to Pierre?"

"Jet's refuelled and waiting," she told him. "We get you to Ophriel's, Castiel gives you a final, formal, dismissal fuck, then we clean you up, tie a big bow around your neck and hand you to Dean as soon as the trial is over. Or maybe we should just cut to the chase and tie the ribbon round your cock."

"I hardly think so," Crowley snarled.

Meg considered for a moment, then shrugged her agreement. "You're right. After all, I was planning to use a really big bow and only a cock like Benny's could pull that off successfully."

"Watch your mouth, bitch. I'm a Queen's Alpha. I'm sure that trumps a Beta Wife."

"Only in your dreams," she laughed. "Come on, up and at 'em, Crowley. We've got a plane to catch."

~

Mateo was ... different.

Which was an odd way to think about it, since Daniel and Joshua had very little in common with each other either. But Mateo was something else entirely.

For one thing he was absolutely tiny. He was at least a foot shorter than Dean and he wasn't just slender but was as delicately boned as a bird. That physical fragility should have made him seem as vulnerable as the tiny China doll he resembled.

But Mateo was a whirling dervish of constant motion, he spoke with his limbs; accompanying every word with expansive physical gestures of waving hands and stamping feet. His voice was too musical to be shrill, but its volume seemed improbable from such a tiny person and his pupils were so dilated with passion that their Omegá green was almost lost to black fire.

He dressed fully in black too, eschewing Daniel's delicate robes and instead choosing a tight bodice of black silk that corseted his flat chest and laced tightly to create an almost female waist and he wore high heeled black laced boots to match the bodice. His thick black hair formed a cloak around his body, falling almost to his knees. And though he wore a skirt consisting of separate petal-like panels of solid silk, the front of the skirt was missing entirely, revealing his mound which was naked except for a thick black tattoo of a vicious bite mark which, Dean realised with a little astonishment, was literally Raphael's mating bite itself, preserved for posterity by the application of ink into the wound.

"It fades," Mateo explained, noting Dean's interest, "But then I just make Raphael bite me again and get the ink reapplied."

Where Daniel was like a white queen, all dignity and elegance, and Joshua was a pretty, spoilt and indulged 'princess', Mateo was a tiny demon of darkness and fury.

But all three were undeniably Omegá. All shared the same androgynous beauty and delicate frames. The only true differences between any of them were temperamental.

Although he had begun to feel a little less self-conscious in the company of Daniel and Joshua, the arrival of Mateo reminded Dean of just how unlike any Omegá he himself was. He was just too damned 'big'.

Mateo examined him with an intensity that bordered on rudeness, then announced, loudly, "I think I hate you." He stamped a foot in emphasis.

Dean flushed and deflated, taking a step backwards from the tiny, fiery Queen.

"Behave yourself, Matty," Daniel snapped.

Mateo tossed his head dramatically, causing his magnificent hair to swirl around him like black wings.

"I shan't," he muttered sulkily. "It's not fair. I thought you were tall, Daniel, but this is...this is intolerable. Why do I always have to be known as the _Short_ Queen?"

"Actually, I think they call you the Gobby Queen," Joshua pointed out, snarkily.

"Better than the slutty Queen," Mateo spat.

"Depends on your point of view," Joshua laughed. "It works for me."

"I think we could just call you the 'rude' Queen," Daniel chided Mateo. "You've hurt Dean's feelings."

"I'm surprised he even heard me from that altitude," Mateo retorted. "How the hell could anyone that big worry about what anyone says?"

# I know I'm too big #

Mateo immediately erupted into fury. "Too big? How the hell can you be TOO big? What a fucking stupid thing to say!"

"Matty actually means 'don't be silly', but Inglais is his second language," Daniel snapped.

"Matty actually means it's stupid to say you're too _anything_ , because you are what you are and you _are_ an Omegá, ergo if you are big then an Omegá can be big. End of," Joshua said.

"Exactly," Mateo agreed.

Dean blinked with astonishment faced with the sudden understanding that none of the Queens gave a damn about his differences. As far as they were concerned, he was a fellow Omegá and that was the end of it.

# I thought the Primáres prefer petite Brides #

"Even if that's true, which I doubt, it's irrelevant. Nobody here cares what the Primáres prefer," Mateo snapped impatiently. "It's not about them, Dean. It never has been. You only have to find one Primá who finds you irresistible, after all. This world is not a good place for an Omegá, Dean, but here in the Packs we do have the ability to mould our own small portions of the world to our liking, if we are clever enough to do so."

"We'll all help you, if you let us," Joshua said, sincerely.

"Unless you decide to wear heels," Mateo muttered, "because if you add insult to injury by getting any taller, I might just have to stab you instead."


	91. Chapter Eighty Six

"Here, take a tiny sip of this," Daniel said, offering Dean a small glass with a pale, amber liquid.

Dean cautiously raised the glass to his mouth, tasted the vile liquor and gagged.

"Yes, it's disgusting, isn't it?" Daniel sympathised. "Angostura Bitters. Pretty good diluted into a cocktail. Pretty awful neat. Now let me try something. Sit down a moment."

Nervously, Dean complied.

"We both know in less than an hour you're going to be face to face with the unmentionable Primá," Daniel explained, "And Meg Cainson told me that apparently your friend, 'Charlie' is it?, had an idea for the both of you to try. Instead of just trying to mask your scents, we're going to attempt to block your sense of smell completely by anaesthetising your sinuses. It's not the most comfortable idea but it's going to probably be the most effective, and the best way to see how well it works is to see if we manage to almost completely block your sense of taste."

Daniel carefully packed Dean's nose with gauze soaked in lidocaine.

"You'll have to breathe through your mouth," he warned. "So be careful as you swallow but take another sip of the bitters."

Dean scrunched his nose as he lifted the glass to his lips but his expression soothed into relieved surprise when the second mouthful barely registered on his tastebuds.

Daniel looked equally impressed. "She's a smart girl, your friend."

Dean nodded his agreement.

"Meg's promised _he'll_ do the same."

Dean glowered.

"Yes, I know you think that horse has already bolted, but I see no reason not to cover all bases anyway."

Dean just shrugged.

"I noticed this morning's special delivery," Daniel mentioned casually. "I've seen a similar lapis lazuli necklace in the Dior catalogue, but for them to produce a special order Rose de Vents bridle harness in under 48 hours wouldn't have left much change out of $50k. It's going to look so perfect with your torc and circlet, much nicer than the plainer version that belongs to the original set. And of course the fittings will work so perfectly with your Dior bridle."

Dean blushed slightly.

# I don't think I should wear it. He might get the wrong idea. #

"Nonsense. I kept and wore every courting gift Seth offered me and we both knew all along I had no genuine interest in his pursuit. A traditional Primá is obliged to shower an Omegá with hope gifts. And, believe it or not, would always be devastated if those gifts were refused or returned even if the Omegá ultimately chose a different admirer. To his dying day, whenever Seth saw me wearing one of his gifts he puffed up like a proud peacock even though he'd happily moved his affections to Evan decades earlier. Primáres have such fragile egos, Dean, that we have to be careful not to shatter them even by an act that we perform because we mistakenly perceive it to be a kindness."

Dean looked wistfully indecisive.

# It is really pretty #

"And valuable," Daniel pointed out, unapologetically. "I can't express to you enough how important that fact is, Dean. We live in a terrible, brutal world where our entire designation has been reduced to being perceived as little more than a commodity to be bought or sold. In the eyes of the Free Betas we are just sexual chattels, a sub-human slave race to be used and denigrated. Even in the Packs, our status as Holy beings has frequently disempowered us rather than the opposite and our Primáres have sought to own us as a prize to feed their own egos, rather than sought the honour of being our chosen protectors.

"Before Chuck mated Cain, I saw endless Omegáres fall, Dean. One after another I saw fellow Omegáres arrive at the Packs so destroyed by the Free Betas that instead of finding the Packs a sanctuary, they simply transferred the nature of their oppression. They arrived in Pack Land believing themselves to have been already 'bought and paid for' and in doing so became slaves, not Queens. And the Primáres, who should have known better, accepted their demure, obedient, oppressed Brides and saw their placidity as desirable rather than horrific. Well, at least until they began being mutilated too.

"Chuck raised his sons to see any obedient Omegá as a horror. Society can't change without the Primáres changing. So you'll see all the scions of Cain with brides who are loud and brash and demanding and all quite 'scandalous' in their own individual ways. You see Matty with his vicious tongue and flying fists and Joshua with his slutty Flores and Zuriel has recently mated an African Omegá, Kondo. I haven't met him yet, but I'm informed his name means 'war' and everyone who has encountered him so far insists it is more than appropriate for his nature.

"I can't tell you what to do, Dean, and I'd never tell you who to mate. I think, though, that we both know, truly, that your destiny will probably lie with the youngest of Cain's sons because whilst you may be nothing like his pre-conceived ideas of an ideal Bride, it is exactly your difference from the norm that is so intensely desirable to him. Whatever they may have imagined, none of Chuck's pups would ever have been actually attracted to a mundane Bride. They are looking for Queens, not chattels, and whilst you could argue that having to play the role of a Diva is in its own way as much an oppression as any other enforced role, it is at least a role which accords power. In the world we live in, we must _all_ play roles. Our only choices are whether or not those roles are centre-stage.

"But, whatever you ultimately decide, you must at least value yourself so highly that you accept that a Primá should be prepared to spend a small fortune just to win sufficient of your time to even open a gift in the first place. The only thing that was purchased by the huge price tag of that gift was your consideration of whether even to accept it. So never feel guilty to take what is freely offered, Dean."

# Doesn't 'hope gift' imply that by accepting it, I am gifting hope? #

Daniel shrugged carelessly. "Of course," he admitted. "But a gift of hope is not a promise of eventual success. Even if you do decide to cut him off completely, at least collect a little useful booty whilst you can."

# That seems cruel. #

"It's a cruel world, Dean. Besides, are you honestly absolutely certain you want to kill the possibility dead?"

Dean flushed and looked away.

"That's what I thought. So keep your options open. Wear the pretty. Let tomorrow's issues be dealt with tomorrow."

# I can't barely think beyond _today's_ issues. #

"That's understandable. Let me show you something." Daniel reached for an ancient scroll and unfurled it to show a hand drawn map. "This is the original blueprint of this Hall. The building might appear modern but it is all a facade. The Pack Hall is centuries old. The foundations are littered with pits and catacombs and secret passages. See this here? This is my apartment. Forget the modernity that currently surrounds you and simply consider it in the context of it being a structure formed over the skeleton of this old map. What can you see?"

Dean poured over the scroll. # A back door. But I've been through your whole apartment. There is only a single front door. #

"It's deliberately designed to appear that way," Daniel agreed, "and none, save Omegáres, know it is not true. Even when the very first Hall was built, the contractors who put in the back door did so whilst working to a plan that implied they were creating the main entrance. Then they were dismissed from service and the plans were redrawn and the contractors who created the true front entrance were completely unaware of existence of the central corridor, let alone the concealed exits that access it. You will find the same design in every Pack Hall, Dean. In every place where it might be imagined an Omegá might ever be trapped or imprisoned, a secret escape has been left for us by our ancestors.

"The back door leads to this corridor here, that runs the full length of the building, and every individual apartment within the primary floor has concealed access to that corridor. There is a tunnel entrance here," he pointed, "that will lead you completely under the surrounding Pack Grounds and under the border fence so you'll emerge several miles away, right inside what is currently Beta Land. This room here... that's where Mateo is quartered. This one is where Joshua is staying. And over here... that's an antechamber of the Main Hall. So, in a few minutes, all of us will slip out of the back of our rooms and meet in that chamber. Then we will enter the Hall together, from within a sealed room, and none will ever understand how we arrived there.

"Our 'miraculous' appearance will be accorded to the power of the Omadonna."

# but why? #

"Well, the simple answer is that, except for Joshua, we don't relish the prospect of walking naked from our apartments to the trial. We'll leave that nonsense to the Primáres. The other answer is that it is imperative we foster the belief we are goddess-touched, and little smoke and mirrors effects like being able to appear and disappear at will are useful embellishments to the roles we play."

# But WHY?#

Daniel frowned a moment, then nodded his understanding. "Why have the secret passages at all?"

Dean nodded.

"Because even before the war of Beta Independence, it was not always good or safe to be an Omegá. We have always striven for ways to limit our own vulnerability. We are not strong, Dean, but we are clever. Imagine it for yourself how half way through the building of every single Pack Hall, the Queen in residence had to contrive some reason to have a huge Diva fit that caused every single worker on the project to be dismissed from service, simply so the project could be reversed and restarted without anyone ever learning of the deception."

# So that is why the Queens choose to role play as Divas #

"Exactly," Daniel agreed. "Even Joshua's greedy little Flores is sleight of hand, Dean."

# You don't trust the Primáres? #

"We trust no one."

# I thought you loved Ophriel. Does even _he_ not know of these secret passages? #

"I _adore_ Ophriel. If there were ever a Primá I would trust, it would be him. But this secret is not mine to tell. The passages are an Omegá secret, like our control of our Flores, and sadly these days we dare not even share our secrets with many Omegáres either. Unfortunately, not many who join us from the Beta Land can be brought into our confidence. Save for you and Joshua, we consider there are no free born Omegáres in America who can be trusted at this point in time."

Daniel helped Dean to substitute his harness chain for the new one, carefully attached the cloak he would wear to the trial, then led him into the furthest room of the apartment.

The room was lined with dark oak panels and, except for a guest bed was bare save for a wardrobe and a huge ornate fireplace with an intricately carved mantlepiece.

"Watch carefully, Dean. Though sometimes the carving will be on a bookcase or a door trim or a window frame or even appear to be a fresco hung like a piece of artwork, in every primary apartment in every Pack Hall, you will find some echo of this Creation Scene. And every planetary body appears simply a carving but is in fact attached to an internal mechanism and can be twisted to the right. But the order of doing so is crucial and it must be done in reverse order of the creation, so that the final turn is of the sun itself. And just to add one other slight complication, the moon must be turned twice counterclockwise rather than once clockwise like the other bodies.

"Make a single mistake and the mechanism will reset itself and will not work again for a period of several hours. In this way, even should someone accidentally stumble across the device, it would be virtually impossible for them to image why the planets move at all, let alone what specific combination of turns would cause the door to open."

He demonstrated the process, slowly and precisely, then as he turned the last piece of the carving, one of the wood panels on the far wall swung open silently to reveal a doorway. "I realise your hands aren't capable of doing this yet," Daniel said, "but some day in the future you may have a desire or need to do this yourself."

Dean nodded solemnly. Until that moment he hadn't really considered that an Omegá's private quarters, so strictly guarded by Alphas, was as much a prison as a refuge, but it was undoubtedly comforting to know about the 'back doors'. It also gave him a much greater insight into the Queens. Even Crowley had been so thoroughly taken in by Joshua's public persona that Dean had struggled to relate his own preconceptions with the flighty but intelligent Omegá he had met. Though he still thought the advice to 'not be a Joshua' himself was valid. He still wasn't certain which 'role' would best suit himself, but he at least now understood that all the Queens chose their public personas with careful deliberation.

Perhaps he needed to wait and see what he needed to achieve before deciding how best to accomplish it, but until that time he would continue to emulate Daniel's more neutral personality to leave his options open.

The dark, unlit corridor would have been terrifying if Daniel had not had the foresight to carry a small electric torch that lit their way over cobbles so old they should have been worn yet still appeared new. It was clear the passage had barely been used over the centuries. The air was dank and stale and Dean could hear scurrying tiny footsteps in the shadows beyond the narrow beam of the torch that suggested rats or other creatures had found their homes in its secret sanctuary.

Still, if he were ever in need of a way to flee a Pack Hall, he doubted the prospect of tripping over a rat or two would deter him from availing himself of the option.

Though, of course, it begged the question of what form of danger the Omegáres had ever anticipated that might require such a painstakingly designed escape.

~~

"For god's sake sit still," Meg snapped, as Castiel flinched involuntarily again.

"It makes me want to sneeze," he protested.

"Yeah, well, this won't work unless I pack your nose completely. You've already fucked this up badly enough without you taking one sniff of his crotch and throwing up."

"Does he smell that bad?"

"I haven't met him," she reminded him, "but Crowley says he smells lovely and Ophriel agrees but says he _did_ sense a slight undercurrent of something a little off, maybe like an underlying sickness. We're all imagining that means, since the scent change was apparently targeted specifically at you, that you'll scent the same problem as Ophriel but it will probably be greatly magnified. You might even find it genuinely repulsive. But, honestly, even if it only makes you recoil a fraction, I think that would probably be enough to get you a second black eye considering how pissed Dean is with you at the moment."

"He didn't refuse the flowers or the harness," Castiel said. "So maybe he's willing to give me a second chance."

"Or maybe he's just waiting to fill his jewellery case before deciding one way or the other," she countered. "Maybe he's realised Dior do matching necklaces and bracelets."

"He can have whatever he wants," Castiel replied carelessly. "Zuriel boasted it cost him most than a million in Hope gifts before Kondo even agreed to meet him, and almost the same again before they actually mated. Mother always warned me to expect to spend at least another 20% on top of the actual Bride-price if I was ever going to find a Bride worth winning."

"How much are you considering Crowley is worth in that calculation?" she laughed.

"The gift of Crowley has no true monetary value," Castiel replied "but I figured out there's possibly an issue I hadn't considered. It was a legal necessity for me to give him formal fuck goodbye this morning to dissolve his contract, and I'd be lying if I said we didn't both find it a bitter-sweet experience, but something's occurred to me since then."

"Oh?"

"I'm figuring that I've just drowned Crowley in my pheromones. I imagine that it could have an effect on Dean if he makes sexual use of him."

"Will it?"

"I don't know," Castiel admitted. "It's not the same for Omagáres as it is for other Pack Members. The pheromones won't engender any loyalty to me from Dean. But, with everything else going on here, I'm not sure he won't be affected in some way regardless. It certainly might trigger his acceptance of me as his true mate."

"So that's good, isn't it?"

Castiel pursed his lips in thought and shook his head. "I don't think it is. It would make me no better than anyone else who has tried to manipulate him. So after the trial, when you take Crowley to meet him, I want you to thoroughly explain the implications to Dean. Warn him to be cautious. If he does decide to sit on Crowley, make sure he knows to use protection."

Meg beamed widely. "I would have anyway," she admitted. "But I'm proud of you, CP."

"I want to win him honestly, Meg. He deserves no less."

"Well," she said, finishing her packing of his nose, quickly applying an extra coat of second-skin to his lips, and stepping back to look at him critically, "He's going to take one look at that magnificent thing," she gestured at his cock, "and either run for the hills or drop to his knees and start praising the All-Father."

Castiel blushed. "I'm going to be the final penitent," he said. "I'll be the last to honour the Omegáres, so Dean will already have received the worship of Ophriel, Raphael and Jophiel before I approach. I'm hoping by the time I reach him, he will be feeling more relaxed about the ceremony and less likely to feel intimidated."

"Hopefully the Omadonna will lend him strength," Meg said. "Even Claire was remarkably calm in the setting of the last conclave. I really think the influence of the Holy Mother is strongest in formal ceremonies. It's as though the ritual allows the Omadonna to easily breach the veil into our world."

"Without Chuck's presence I'm not expecting _him_ to speak, but I certainly would be surprised if at least one of the Omegáres doesn't luminesce," Castiel agreed.

"Well," she said, as a loud sonorous gong resounded in the distance. "Time's up, Castiel. The conclave has been called to order. Any last requests?"

"You make it sound like it's going to be _me_ on trial," he protested.

She smirked. "Oh, I think you will be, Castiel, in your own way."

He swallowed nervously but rose to his feet. "Then let the trial begin," he said, and led her from their room towards the Main Hall.


	92. Chapter Eight Seven

The small room he and Daniel met the other two Omegáres in was a white-walled, brightly lit, seating area with modern chairs and coffee tables and magazines and even a small espresso machine in the corner. It resembled a dentist's office or the reception area of a swanky sales room. The electric lighting hurt Dean's eyes with its stark contrast to the dark passageway they had emerged from, so it took a few minutes of blinking furiously before he could fully appreciate the beauty of the Queens in their matching cloaks and bare, slim bodies.

All were wearing jewellery round their necks and heads, and harness chains and bridles like his own, but each Omegá had chosen a different style as though even dressed in no more than a few pieces of expensive trinkets they still wished to make a firm stamp of their differing personalities.

Daniel's pieces were elegantly plain, formed of fine white gold with inset emeralds. Joshua, who normally wore no adornments at all, wore delicate rose gold filigree threaded with an abundance of tiny multicoloured stones in topaz and aquamarine and pink onyx. Mateo had opted for solid titanium, burned to a midnight rainbow hue, with just a single large Ruby inset in a choker necklace. His own jewellery, of course, was formed of cast bronze with lapis lazuli and his new harness chain was a series of fine chains linked together with bronze discs decorated with tiny stars formed from inset slivers of perfectly matching blue gems. Mateo, like Dean, bore a ceremonial dagger on his hip, though Mateo's had a ruby set pommel and its blade was steel rather than bone.

Dean looked at the three Queens and startled slightly, his eyes darting uncertainly to each of their groins. Joshua and Mateo exchanged conspiratorial grins then nodded at him. Dean turned in confusion to Daniel, seeing the same thing, and uncertain now how he had missed it earlier.

Each of the three Queens were wearing bridles with slightly extended base plates that curled up from between their thighs and concealed the base of their pubic mounds. Each had, effectively, tucked their genitals inside, concealing them from view so only the bare flesh of their actual mounds was visible. To the casual eye, there was no difference now to be seen between their mounds and his own.

"Daniel has convinced us that this is the new fashionable style for Conclaves," Joshua said airily. "Though it's a little peculiar that being 'naked' for this ceremony involves wearing so very much more than I usually do."

Dean grabbed for his tablet. #Thank you. All of you. But is this really allowed?#

"Probably not, strictly speaking," Mateo admitted, "but then again neither are shoes and I have absolutely no intention of taking my heels off. So stuff 'em if they don't like it."

"It's a Majeure," Daniel explained. "This is our conclave. As long as we remain united, none will dare question our choices. Remember, Dean, in a formal setting such as this, we are the highest of the Hierarchy. Unless another Queen attends and takes umbrage at our dress, there will not be a single person in that room with the rank or authority to criticise us."

Dean dipped his head and rubbed at his eyes, blinking furiously to refuse the tears that were threatening to fall.

A loud gong sounded on the other side of the door.

"Ready?" Daniel asked.

Dean braced his shoulders and nodded firmly.

"Just don't forget the pit," Joshua whispered, nudging Dean's side. "It's going to take a minute for your eyes to adjust, so be careful where you're walking. First time I did this myself, I nearly tripped headfirst into the damned thing."

Entering the Main Hall was a surreal experience.

Like a masterfully designed stage set, clever lighting alone had transformed the modern hall into a dark, gothic cave. It felt like they were walking from modernity straight into the midst of a medieval film set. The usual overhead lights had been switched off and replaced with a totally different lighting system. Though Dean suspected the wall torches and suspended chandeliers were probably electric for practical reasons, they glowed with a muted low voltage yellow that barely lifted the shadows from the edges of the room. The Dias was underlit, probably by strategically placed spotlights, but again the effect had been deliberately softened to create the impression of nothing more than torchlight.

Only the pit itself was illuminated with genuine flaming torches, their light flickering dramatically with a breeze from the open tunnel to the Pack dungeons. Daniel had explained to him already that since all to be judged had already been incarcerated for several days in anticipation of the conclave, they were already in the dungeons and would be brought forth for sentence from their cells at the end of the tunnel, rather than led down into the pit from the hall itself as had happened in Detroit.

The four Omegáres seated themselves elegantly on the Dias thrones. First Daniel, then Mateo, then Joshua and finally Dean, arranged left to right so that the Primáres would approach the Dias and give worship first to Daniel, as the Queen of Pierre, then would move down the line, exiting on the right, then returning to kneel on the platform beneath them, to expose their genitals to the Omegáres in a posture of submission.

Dean felt sick with stress and anticipation, his own open legged position on the throne leaving his mound rudely exposed to the gathered Pack members, even though the bridle fortunately concealed his actual Flores from view. Although the faces watching him were rapt with unmistakable worshipful awe, so were demonstrably nothing like the crowds gathered in Falls Park, there was still an uncomfortable correlation between the two events, an unavoidable deja vu that made it difficult to remember he was being viewed with honour in this setting rather than simply displayed for mockery.

He attempted to mirror the cool indifference of the other Omegáres, willing himself to appear as nonchalant about his exposure as they were.

But his composure almost collapsed with the entrance of Ophriel.

He'd always thought of Daniel's mate as a tall, thin man and had he ever considered how he might appear without clothes he would have imagined him to appear physically unremarkable.

Yet, without clothing to conceal his build, Ophriel was surprisingly muscular. His muscles didn't have the mass of an Alpha but were sleekly defined, every ripple and curve of his musculature prominent over his frame. He had the lean, deadly build of a fast predator, a panther or a wolf perhaps, and the sleek efficiency of his build suddenly made the bulk of an Alpha seem clumsy rather than impressive. Compared with a Primá, Alpha musculature was more show than substance, like the difference between a lumbering Ox and a fast, deadly tiger.

Dean remembered believing as a pup that Primáres weren't even a true separate designation; that they were simply Alphas who were richer and more powerful than other Alphas and had simply set themselves up to be something 'special'. Seeing Ophriel literally 'in the flesh' it was blindingly obvious that the only similarity between an Alpha and an Alpha Primá was that they were both male. In every other respect, the fact they were genetically totally different species was brutally obvious.

And the most unmistakable evidence of that difference was, unavoidably, Ophriel's cock.

Dean had, unfortunately, seen more Alpha cocks than he had ever wished to. He clearly remembered the substantial weapon that protruded from Sam's groin and had found it to be so improbably large that his ass still twitched uncomfortably at the idea it had ever managed to open enough to swallow Sam's cock at all.

And Dean had always understood, intellectually, that a Primá penis was larger than an Alpha's, but he had imagined maybe a big bigger than Sam's, a little thicker and longer perhaps, but not hugely significantly different until it was buried inside an Omegá and swelled into a knot. He had imagined a number Six peg to be an artificial representation of a swollen knot, not of an actual cock.

He'd been mistaken.

Swallowing dryly, shuffling hopefully imperceptibly on his throne as his Flores responded to his sight of Ophriel's member with an embarrassing gush of slick, praying that the bridle plate would successfully prevent him leaking a puddle of eager juices, Dean's horror at the magnitude of Ophriel's dick was equalled only by the treacherous greedy pulsing that drummed between his open thighs in response to the sight.

Where the hell did Ophriel conceal that thing in pants?

Come to think of it, why did Ophriel conceal it at all?

Dean was suddenly surprised it wasn't the Primáres prancing around the Pack Halls naked rather than the Omegáres like Joshua. He couldn't imagine any Pack pissing contest wouldn't be halted abruptly by a Primá simply whipping out his dick, slamming it down on a table (probably shattering said table) and smirking with satisfaction.

Abruptly, oddly, Dean's own docking suddenly became completely irrelevant. If his own self-worth had ever centred on his own dick, his ego would have shattered completely at first sight of a Primá cock.

He blinked with astonishment as he remembered that First Alphas, like Crowley, were actually mounted by their Primáres. How the hell was that even possible? He tried to imagine something the size of Ophriel's cock being shoved inside Crowley's ass and winced at the thought. He must have misunderstood something because it didn't seem possible any Alpha would even survive the experience, let alone be able to walk afterwards.

Dean wasn't even convinced that 'he' would survive the experience, though his cunt was throbbing its vehement disagreement to that assessment.

Oh god, please don't embarrass yourself, he told himself desperately, wondering whether the room was really as suddenly hot and stifling as it felt, as Ophriel stepped between Daniel's open thighs, sank elegantly to his knees and leaned forward to press his lips against Daniel's mound.

He squirmed, knowing Ophriel would soon do the same to him, just as he had done two days earlier. Dean knew the kiss would be brief and reverent and oddly impersonal but it didn't feel that way any more without clothes separating them, not when Ophriel's turgid cock would be slapping the floor between his thighs, its thick heavy presence just inches away from his Flores.

Ophriel was a hundred years old, was Daniel's mate, and had grandpups twice Dean's age, he reminded himself urgently. He didn't 'want' Ophriel. He didn't desire Ophriel. And his Flores was only being so fucking responsive because of Alastair, he reminded himself furiously, willing his heart to slow as Ophriel moved to kneel before Mateo.

He wasn't 'Claire'. He wasn't an insane victim of his own biology. He was the controller of his own body, not its slave. He was not a slut. Not a mindless rutting beast.

He panted, as Ophriel knelt for Joshua, sucking deep steadying gulps of oxygen into his lungs, willing his legs to still their trembling, clenching the muscles of his Flores as tightly as was possible despite the cotton-woolish responses engendered by his muting.

And as Ophriel approached him, as the tall Primá dropped between his thighs, there was a moment Dean teetered on the brink, when it seemed impossible not to arch his body backwards in shameless wanton demand, but Ophriel raised his head from its posture of bowed submission, deliberately meeting his eyes, his expression gentle and understanding and oh so terribly kind.

"Be still, pretty pup," he murmured quietly. "Be brave. Prove to all here what I already know. You are too courageous to fall, Dean. Stay strong, little Queen in waiting."

He pressed his lips reverently against Dean's mound, his touch a cooling balm that sucked heat from Dean's Flores rather than igniting its fire further.

Ophriel rose, bowed low in deliberate respect, then stepped silently off the Dias onto the lower platform and knelt before Daniel, his thighs spread wide, his cock and balls presented like a worshipful offering before his mate.

And, even as Dean's hammering heart began to ease with the relief of what felt like a narrow, precarious escape, Raphael Cainson approached the Dias and the performance was repeated once more.

It was as Jophiel pressed his mouth against him, his lips whispering against the flesh of his mound, that it occurred to Dean that the Primáres had deliberately ordered their worship so that Castiel would be last, so that the Primá whose touch might be more than Dean could bear would occur only after he'd had three opportunities to learn how to repress his instinctive responses.

For creatures as capable of casual, brutal cruelty as the Pack members undoubtedly were, they were also capable of the most astounding kindness, he realised. The hands that crushed also caressed. The minds capable of inventing such awful punishments as impalements and wormings were also used to ease the discomfort of a newly arrived Omegá into the reality of Pack life.

Even the wicked evil of their judgements was applied to protect those they felt too vulnerable to protect themselves.

That was important. No, he decided. That was critical. He had to remember that duality. He had to appreciate that Pack Law was a two-edged sword. It would be too easy to let himself see the Packs as monsters, and yes, perhaps, in ways they definitely were monstrous and yet in every interaction of himself with the Packs he had witnessed nothing but their infinite capacity for kindness too.

Surely there had to be a way to temper the monstrosity with the kindness and find a middle ground which addressed both sides of Pack nature.

And maybe he should stop trying to distract himself and pay closer attention to the fact that Castiel Cainson was already rising from between Mateo's legs and would soon be right in his face.

He abruptly wished he hadn't worn the harness. It felt like a weakness, a chink in his armour that the Primá could exploit.

Oh God, the Primá was glorious.

The bastard was perfection from his tousled near-black hair, to his blue eyes, to his disgustingly huge cock.

That cock's been in Crowley, he reminded himself, finding the idea even less probable than the idea of Ophriel's fitting inside the little Alpha. Then he blinked in sudden realisation that 'that' cock had probably been in quite a few hot wet places over the years.

So who exactly was supposed to be considered a slut in this situation, anyway?

Nasty thing was probably riddled with disease, he told himself urgently, as Castiel knelt for Joshua and his long, thick, perfect beautiful dick was so close Dean could almost have reached out and touched it.

And he bit his lips hard, choking down a snarl of outrage, when Joshua responded to Castiel's kiss with a stifled, coy giggle.

It would probably be highly inappropriate to bitch slap a queen, Dean reminded himself, forcing his limbs to remain loose rather than stiffening with jealous fury.

He might not want Castiel, but until he cut off his hope gifts, he was pretty damned certain Castiel was exclusively his alone to reject. The fact that Joshua was mated and therefore no rival did not actually occur to him at all in that moment.

Holy Mother, help me, he prayed, as Castiel rose and approached him, his confident steps seeming to falter to an almost boyish bashfulness. The Primá's cheeks flushed red as he dropped to his knees and his eyes darted down and to the side as though completely incapable of looking directly at him.

And though he could have chosen to read that inability to look at him as disgust, the fact that pre-cum was suddenly leaking out of Castiel's cock with almost as much gushing pressure as the slick building up behind his own Flores plate was pretty much evidence that, despite all indications to the contrary, Castiel really was turned on by the idea of an Alpha-sized Omegá. Too turned on, by the looks of things.

Who would have thunk it?

Hot damn.

Dean suddenly found himself struggling not to laugh.

The moment he'd been dreading for so long, the scenario that had filled him with stomach-churning nausea was finally upon him and, instead of it being he who was writhing like an uncontrollable slut, his body arching and opening for mounting like a mindless beast, it was the proud, uptight, Primá who was shuffling on his knees like an adolescent pup, his cock dripping with the uncontrolled excitement of a pubescent, and his head shaking with nerves as he struggled to even touch Dean's flesh without embarrassing himself with an instant ejaculation.

It would probably be almost terminally embarrassing for the Grandé Alpha Primá to come 'in his pants' in the middle of what was supposed to be a solemn, religious ceremony. Mortifying, maybe.

Possibly even worse than someone sitting in a crowded Pack hall being publicly 'rejected' by his true mate.

Fucker.

So, really, it had to be done, didn't it?

It wasn't even an option.

As Dean lowered his hand to tap the top of Castiel's bowed, trembling head, he accidentally (after all, everyone knew he had little control of his hands) swiped his fingers down the edge of his Flores plate, coating them with the slick that was seeping from the edges, and then he pressed them against Castiel's scalp.

Castiel jolted as the chemical signature of his true mate sank into the pores of his skin, sucked into his bloodstream and flooded his entire body.

Without any sense of smell, his body had been completely unprepared for the assault of sensation and, already so turned on by Dean's naked perfection (not to mention the fact the Omegá was wearing his Hope gift so prominently that Castiel's Alpha had been chanting mine, mine, mine, since the moment he'd spotted the fact) Castiel had no warning whatsoever before he reacted by throwing his head back with a roar and his dick exploded a gust of come that sprayed the floor beneath Dean's throne like an erupting geyser.

Fortunately for Dean, the way the throne positioned his legs prevented any of Castiel's semen from splashing his own flesh so he was saved the embarrassment of joining his would-be-mate in public disgrace.

And _that_ , Dean decided, as chaos erupted around the Queens' Dias was how a Force Majeure Conclave should be kicked off.


	93. Chapter Eighty Eight

"Well, this is definitely the first time in my memory that the Queens have taken a recess before the first guilty have even been called," Daniel said, handing one of the tiny filled espresso cups to Mateo and beginning to prepare another for himself.

"How long do you think we can string this out?" Joshua asked a little gleefully, sipping at his own drink.

"We'll leave them half hour or so, long enough for the staff to clean and sterilise the Dias. I don't want any risk of Dean being accidentally exposed to Castiel's pheromones. Besides, I'm sure his older brothers are thoroughly enjoying the chance to rub his nose in this humiliation. Castiel spends so much of his life overshadowing his older brothers that they can't be blamed if they take this opportunity to take him down a peg or two. His coming untouched like an overexcited adolescent will probably be seen by the Pack witnesses ( of which there were many ) simply as evidence of your power, Dean, and I'm sure by this time tomorrow your personal legend will be considerably enhanced."

"With the way gossip works, I'm sure legend will paint a picture of Castiel so lost in thrall to your beauty that half the audience were drowned before he stopped orgasming," Mateo snickered.

"Poor Castiel," Joshua sighed, though his expression suggested his sympathy was not entirely genuine.

"Hah," Mateo spat. "I think it was wonderfully clever of you, Dean."

"It was certainly a fortuitous 'accident'," Daniel agreed. "Though poor Ophriel's knees aren't up to staying on that platform indefinitely, so we'll have to go rescue him soon."

Dean frowned in confusion.

"The Primáres can't rise to their feet until we return to the Dias," Joshua explained. "I'd be happy to leave Jophiel there all day but I agree with Daniel that Ophriel doesn't deserve the discomfort. Anyway, I don't dare drink any more coffee. This bridle is really awkward to get on and off so I really want to avoid needing to take a piss before lunchtime."

"Speaking of bridles, do you want to remove Castiel's harness before we go back in, Dean? No one would blame you for doing so under the circumstances. I can send a servant to fetch the original one if you'd prefer."

# What would that imply? #

"Well, it could be read as you being really angry with him or even as a complete rejection. It depends how fragile his ego is feeling at the moment. But not taking it off would definitely imply you are open to the possibility of letting him earn your forgiveness."

Dean considered his options, then shrugged. # I'll leave it on #

"Ohhhh. Good choice," Mateo said, with a smirk. "You don't cut bait when you've got a Primá that firmly on the hook. You enjoy watching him wriggle, and then collect all the shiny pretties that fall out of his pants pockets as he desperately tries to win back your favour."

"I'm rather jealous," Joshua admitted. "I've spent years trying to become seen as a sex goddess and all I've achieved is Matty calling me a slut. Then you come along and in one fell swoop win the reputation of being a complete dominatrix."

"Oh, I like that. I think I'll start referring to you as The Domina, Dean," Mateo chuckled. "We definitely ought to start creating you the persona of a strict Mistress. Let's capitalise on this happy 'accident' and make use of the fact you're physically larger than any Primá. What do you think, Daniel?"

Daniel frowned thoughtfully. "It's Dean's choice," he reminded Mateo, "but it's a workable idea. It's possible we could all benefit from encouraging the idea of a Dominant Queen, one who is physically supreme rather than just accorded a legal status of supremacy. Our hierarchical position is seen by too many as a favour accorded to us, rather than an absolute. And, of course, any 'favour' can be withdrawn. Perhaps by fostering the idea of Dean as Domina, we can all be elevated to a less assailable position."

"I can see that working," Joshua agreed. "We all shove Dean into an ascendent position and hang onto his skirts and get dragged upwards too."

Dean looked at the three Queens uncertainly.

# I'm not sure what you're suggesting #

"Whether you meant to do it or not, you have started something here, Dean. Never before, in the entire history of the Packs, has an Omegá caused a Grandé Alpha Primá to lose control of himself in public. If Castiel was a weaker man, perhaps it would not matter. But, frankly, Castiel is the strongest Primá we have seen in centuries. His performance at the Detroit Conclave and his highly public work securing the legal independence of the Confederacy has firmly established him in the minds of all as the ultimate Grandé. 

"And yet he has been undone by you, a single Omegá barely out of puphood. So we could let this go. Castiel's reputation can easily survive the knock, we could let people put it down to him being so busy doing his great works that he never took the time to mature sexually. The Packs will chuckle a bit about him acting like a nervous pup when finally faced with an unmated Omegá thrust into his face, and everything will move on and normality will resume.

"Or we could work the situation to our advantage. We could let the rumour become that this was not evidence of Castiel being momentarily weak but of you being so strong that even he could not stand against you. In fact, cast in that light, we can reinvent what happened two nights ago. Instead of people believing he left the hall because he was 'rejecting' you, we let people rewrite the moment in their memories to be him fleeing from you because he wisely sensed the danger you represented to his authority."

"The authority of ALL Primáres," Mateo corrected firmly.

"Indeed," Daniel agreed. "Of course, by setting you up to be prominent, Dean, we inevitably would put you in some danger. We would be painting a target on your back. Every Primá in the world would then see you as the ultimate prize that would elevate their status, so you'd have to be terribly careful not to end up mated to someone as power hungry as Lucifer, for instance. But if you are brave enough to let us do this, you could possibly change all of our lives for the better."

# What exactly are you wanting to do? #

"When we return to the Dias, we reposition ourselves. You take my position on the far right. Of course, that will be seen possibly as simply a courtesy on my part to the Pack members and a precaution to the Primáres since they are aware of the pheromonal danger. So simply seating you as primary Omegá will not necessarily signify we are according you that role. However, if we make a point of deferring to you on each and every judgement today, we will ram the point home quite unmistakably."

# So you three will propose each judgement but then make an act of asking me to approve it?#

"Yes."

# And if I disagree with the judgement, will you listen? #

"Of course," Daniel agreed. 

"It's only going to work if the judgements are seen as good," Mateo pointed out doubtfully. "Dean's too fresh from Beta Land to understand why we act as we do. If Dean folds and lets the guilty off the hook, we'll achieve the opposite of empowering ourselves. No one is going to put much credence in the idea of a Dominant Queen who lets people get away with having abused him."

Daniel shrugged. "I trust Dean to do the right thing," he said simply. "I believe he may temper our decisions, but a new perspective is never a bad thing, and I doubt he would be arrogant enough to dismiss our opinions completely."

Dean met Daniel's gaze and saw the Omegá wasn't obliquely warning him to behave but was honestly according a belief that Dean was mature enough to step cautiously through the minefield of the trial. The responsibility and trust that Daniel was offering him was huge. Yet he'd already accepted the idea he was going to have to find a 'role' to play in Pack Land and there was no doubt the one the Queens were suggesting could be beneficial to all of them.

Plus, it would completely fuck with Castiel's expectations.

# Okay. I trust you too. Let's do this. #

~

Over the last couple of days, Daniel had explained to Dean why none of the doctors or officials from Sioux Falls General could be put on trial. Because nothing that had occurred to him in that place had breached Beta Law, the only persons the Pack could legally hold accountable under Pack Law for what had happened were Dean's legal guardians at the time.

Since one of those guardians had been Sam, Dean had been happy to accept the Pack's decision to let the situation lie.

Even for Sam's sake, he wasn't sure he would have felt quite as amenable to dropping the matter entirely if Becky Rosen was still at large because letting her go unpunished would effectively have made him responsible for every other Omegá who subsequently suffered at her hands. But Daniel assured him Dr Rosen had been thoroughly dealt with by Pack Justice for all of her transgressions and was in no position to ever hurt anyone ever again. Dean had chosen deliberately not to ask the nature of her punishment. He had the distinct feeling that knowing the details might distract from his overall satisfaction at the idea.

Even the events at Shab-e Yalda were being treated as heresy rather than Omegá abuse as far as the Beta 'guilty' were concerned.

"We're going to try the Councillors both as representatives of the City and as individuals," Daniel whispered to him, as they sat on the Dias once more, this time with Dean on the far right and Daniel directly on his left. "Our first decision will be whether to allow Ophriel to raze the city as he has threatened to do tomorrow. The evacuation is already well underway but we still have the option of reversing that decision."

Daniel hushed as the gong was sounded in the hall and the Primáres rose, a little stiffly, from the platform they had been kneeling on for almost an hour, bowed low to the Dias and moved to the edge of the pit where four chairs had been positioned for them.

Castiel, who had not even raised his head from its bowed penitent position for their re-entry, cast a sly glance sideways as the Primáres stepped off the platform and then faltered, confused, by the reordered position of the Omegáres. Then his gaze lasered in to Dean's waist and he emitted an audible sigh of shocked relief as he saw that Dean was still wearing his hope gift. Though he said nothing, and simply filed quietly off the platform after the other Primáres, his entire bearing changed from defeated humiliation to a definite posture of relaxation.

Dean frowned thoughtfully, watching the Primá walk away, unsure whether he'd made the right decision in leaving the harness in place but definitely enjoying the sight of Castiel's firm buttocks bouncing as he prowled off the platform with restored confidence.

An Alpha guard emerged from the tunnel entrance into the pit, a flaming torch in his hand, and proceeded to walk around the pit edges, lighting a number of additional wall sconces to raise the faint orange aura of the pit to a brighter yellow glow. He then set a brazier alight in two of the four corners, adding their hot red flames to the ambience.  
Then he moved to stand on the exit steps, his arms folded and his posture grim.

Dean squirmed nervously as there was a small commotion within the tunnel and then five naked Betas were driven out of its darkness into the pit, their reluctant entrance emphasised by the fact their steps were being encouraged by two huge Alphas carrying large whips that they flicked carelessly against the betas' buttocks and legs as they shuffled into view.

All of the Betas were using their hands to cover their genitals, obviously mortified to be seen naked in public. Their flesh was pale and sweat glistened and all of them were so overweight that rolls of fat lined their abdomens and two had bellies that protruded so much they appeared pregnant.

Unlike the Primáres who were glorious in their nakedness, the Betas' naked bodies were flabby and white and distinctly unappealing and Dean had the sudden uncomfortable understanding of why the idea of worming had occurred to Lucifer. Except for their limbs, the naked Betas definitely resembled nothing more than sweaty, white, overfed grubs.

Ophriel rose to his feet, turned to the Dias, did a slight double-take at the realisation his mate had relinquished his position to Dean, then bowed low directly to Dean.

"With your permission, I call this Conclave to order," he announced.

Bolstered by Daniel's comforting hand on his left thigh, Dean nodded solemnly to the Primá.

"The guilty below stand for the City of Sioux Falls. They stand in representation of the entire citizenry who have broken faith with the Packs and have, by their act of heresy against the Holy Omadonna himself, proven themselves unworthy to dwell on the land we Packs hold in sacred trust for the glory of the All-Father.

"As Primá of the Pack which granted the fief to these heretics, I accept the punishment due to me for the mistake of my ancestors. I am guilty and will descend to the pit to receive the sentence passed on me by my Grandé," Ophriel turned to Castiel and bowed low. 

Castiel rose to his feet, nodded acknowledgement to Ophriel, then spoke. 

"I sentence you to be lashed for the mistakes of your ancestors. One strike for each decade these heretics were allowed to pollute the land of our All-Father."

Ophriel nodded his acceptance of the judgement.

"I, the guilty, accept my punishment of sixteen strikes of the whip."

He turned his attention to the Dias. "Is this punishment satisfactory to the Omadonna?", he asked humbly.

"We shall confer," Daniel announced dismissively.

# What the fuck?#

"The Packs take heresy seriously, Dean. This is not just a way to punish Sioux Falls for what was done to you, though admittedly it is the main reason. Even so, for the heresy to have taken place at all, the Pack must accept responsibility for allowing its tenants to believe such an act would be permitted. This is as much a case of mismanagement by the landlords as it is evil done by the tenants. Pack Law cannot demand a remedy by the tenants without demanding remedy by the Primá who allowed it to happen. Ophriel was fully aware of the consequences to himself of demanding the City be punished," Daniel said calmly.

"He's lucky Castiel's such a nice guy," Mateo pointed out. "Raphael would have sentenced him to a lash per year and though a Primá can survive a flogging that brutal, it would take him weeks to recover. Sixteen lashes will hurt like fuck but will be healed within a week."

"Definitely," Joshua agreed. "Look at Castiel. This time yesterday he had a black eye. Today, you can't see a thing. Primáres heal really quickly."

# But it's Ophriel. #

Daniel nodded calmly, only a suspicious brightness to his eyes betraying how heartbroken he was by the idea himself. "No Primá deserves the whip less than he," Daniel agreed, "but unless you are choosing to forgive the heresy entirely, the Pack must also face judgement."

# I can do that? #

"You can do anything, Dean. You can even declare the conclave finished and send everybody home, if you like," Mateo said. "Of course, you have to ask yourself if doing so would result in every other City Council in America deciding that holding a Creation Ceremony every year would be a cool idea after all."

And Mateo was right, Dean knew, even though it stuck in his craw to admit it. Forced into the position of being able to stop it, Dean had no way of avoiding the responsibility for what would happen if he did. 

Even as the actual victim of what had happened, Dean had until this point, privately, considered the eviction of the city to be a brutal and pointlessly spiteful overreaction, making all the innocents in the city suffer along with the guilty. Though remembering the thousands of revellers in the Park that night there were a lot of guilty. Not to mention all the citizens who had celebrated Gordon's death. Whilst Dean felt no guilt or sadness for what he had done to the Alpha, it disgusted him that anyone might have thought it a cause for actual celebration. So, no, there were not many 'innocents' in that city. 

And understanding that Ophriel had given his terrible judgement in the understanding that he would have to pay such an awful price himself, certainly cast the whole thing in a different light. What if Castiel was more like his vicious older brother? What if that noble old Primá was facing 160 lashes rather than 16? At the point Ophriel chose to serve the eviction, he must have accepted his sentence might have been passed in full.

Yet he had still judged it to be a price worth paying.

So who was he, Dean Winchester, to disrespect the wisdom of such a mature man who had demonstrated nothing but kindness to him in his own dealings?

Ophriel believed the eviction of Sioux Falls was absolutely necessary.

And Dean was going to respect that belief.

It was, however, a damned good thing under the circumstances that Castiel had been so lenient in his sentence.

#Why Ophriel? #

Daniel frowned in confusion. "Because he's the Primá of the most important Pack in South Dakota. The buck has to stop at the top of the Hierarchy."

Dean nodded.

# Which is Ophriel's Grandé #

"Fuck a duck," Mateo gasped. "That's genius, Dean. It's a fucking tragedy your hands are all messed up, otherwise you could actually do it yourself."

Joshua rolled his eyes. "I think we've all experienced quite enough sexual dominance for one day, Mateo. Let's try to avoid turning the Conclave into some weird S & M performance. I like the idea though. Castiel's so young he'll heal in half the time and the sentence was deliberately tiny, so it's not something he should take issue with. He clearly doesn't relish the idea of Ophriel having a flogging any more than the rest of us do. I imagine he'll actually be grateful to take the punishment himself. Besides, doing something noble will erase a bit of his earlier humiliation, won't it?"

"You realise by doing this, you seal the City's fate?" Daniel asked, though the shadows had cleared from his eyes with the lifting of the threat to Ophriel.

#About that. Will they check the buildings before setting the fire? #

"For people?"

# For Pets #

"Huh?" Mateo said blankly.

Daniel blinked with astonishment. "Oh goddess, Dean. You're right. You're so absolutely right. Bastards like that can't be trusted. I swear to you it will be done, even if I have to check every damned apartment block myself."

Understanding dawned on Mateo's face. "You can borrow all the Alphas we brought down with us. They're just sitting around eating too much and fucking each other. Make 'em do something useful. Baggsie I get any snakes collected though, because I'm working on building this whole mystic evil queen theme in my Pack Hall."

# Then yes. Burn the fucker down. #

Daniel smiled serenely, and turned to where his mate was patiently awaiting his fate.

"It is the judgement of this conclave that the punishment is satisfactory if applied to the Primá upon whom this responsibility ultimately fell. That responsibility lies not with you, Ophriel, but with the Grandé of South Dakota. Castiel Cainson."

Castiel rose to his feet and looked at the Dias. "So say you all?"

The four Omegáres all nodded their agreement.

Castiel looked directly at Dean, their eyes meeting for the first time. He arched a brow questioningly.

Dean just smirked.

Castiel narrowed his eyes in thought, then his mouth twitched slightly. He bowed low to the Dias in general, then lower to Dean in particular.

"Then let it be so," he said, his voice deep and commanding, and with a deliberate nod to Dean, he moved confidently to the stairwell and descended into the pit.

"Ohhhh," Joshua stage whispered. "He REALLY likes you."

"Kinky fucker," Mateo sniped.

Daniel just smiled down at his own mate, letting himself truly relax for the first time in days.


	94. Chapter Eighty Nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year!

As the Five Betas huddled miserably, still hiding their groins with their hands, in one of the dark corners of the pit, eschewing the warmth of a brazier for the relative privacy of the shadows, two new Alphas wheeled a device into the pit and erected it into a large x- shaped cross on which manacles were attached to each of its four points.

Castiel stepped forwards and placed his wrists into the two highest manacles, opening his legs to mirror the wide stance of the lower parts of the frame.

Significantly, neither of the Alphas moved to fasten the manacles in place. It was clear that the Grandé required no 'encouragement' to accept the punishment and was merely using the wrist holds to balance and brace himself.

A small Alpha emerged from the tunnel, a curled leather whip in his hands, and Dean stiffened in surprise.

"None save Crowley would have the nerve to do it," Daniel whispered to Dean. "Certainly our own First Alphas would have wet themselves at the idea of flogging a Grandé. It is simply never done. Even though this is the will of the Conclave, retribution could still be demanded. It is almost unheard of for a Primá to judge himself as Ophriel did, but completely unknown for that punishment to be passed to a Grandé to bear.

"It would be valid, though unfair, to demand that the executors of the punishment are subsequently punished for inflicting harm on a Grandé so, as I said, Crowley was the obvious choice. Though this substitution must have been very hurriedly arranged just now between Meg and Morgana since none were anticipating this judgement to be made."

# Will Crowley face retribution for doing it? #

Daniel smiled secretively. "I doubt the one he belongs to will take a whip to him, or indeed, allow it to be done, if that is what you are asking. This is undoubtedly the best decision and Crowley is one of only two Alphas in America to have the particular protection required for this service. You do not have to watch, Dean. If you fix your eyes to the far point beyond the pit, it will not be evident that you are looking beyond, rather than down. Even though the whip is plain, it is inevitable that blood will be drawn. Crowley is a strong man and Castiel will not accept for his punishment to be faked."

# I owe it to him to watch #

"I agree," Daniel said, "but remember you are ultimately accountable only to yourself. If it is too hard, look away. You're just a pup, really. It hurts me that your innocence has been stolen at all. I have no wish to add to your nightmares in this way."

Dean nodded his acceptance of Daniel's point but still felt obliged to watch.

He didn't feel guilty. He thought perhaps he should but, if it was unavoidable, and had to be done to someone, then better Castiel than Ophriel.

And it wasn't because he liked Ophriel more (though he admittedly did) or because he was still pissed at the Grandé (though he was) but if the Packs wanted to insist so strongly on the sanctity of Pack Law, even to the idea of a punishment following down the generations onto the ancestors of a wrongdoer, then surely that same Pack Law should also demand that a sentence fell where it truly belonged.

Logic howled that the buck should ALWAYS stop at a Grandé.

Yet, according to Daniel, it NEVER did.

Clearly this day and this conclave was going to bring a lot of 'firsts'.

The whipping was efficient rather than brutal, effective rather than excessive and although blood was indeed drawn, it did not occur until the final three strokes, so Castiel's skin was lined with raised welts rather than split skin and none, save two of the Betas, had found the process vomit worthy.

And when the sixteenth stroke had been applied, and Crowley curled his whip, Castiel released himself from the cross with a calmness belied only by the heaving of his flanks as he took some deep breaths to calm himself. Then he turned to face the Dias, dropped carefully to his knees, thighs spread to echo his earlier posture below the Dias and he bowed his head.

Dean felt an instant flush of renewed interest within his Flores.

The Primá, glorious when dominant, was irresistible in submission. All that power and strength leashed invisibly but unmistakably simply by Castiel's desire to appear worthy of his 'mate'. And his skin, so beautiful unmarked, somehow was even more gorgeous red and welted and flushed from the flogging. Not because he was in evident pain, exactly, but because it was pain he had willingly accepted from Dean.

Which was possibly a little kinky, admittedly, but didn't make it any less true.

Dean could no longer deny his own attraction. So what if Castiel had fucked it up so royally at their first meeting? He was rapidly recovering all his lost ground. In every act and deed he was surely proving that his desire was genuine, even despite Dean's unusual appearance and mutilated body.

He should perhaps at least consent to being formally wooed by the Primá, he decided, and his Flores throbbed in happy agreement.

Ophriel addressed Dean. "Is the Omadonna satisfied that punishment has been sufficiently applied? The guilty awaits your pleasure."

"You may either accept that redemption has been made, or demand that it is repeated if you feel the strikes were made with insufficient effect," Daniel explained quietly.

Dean quickly typed a reply, though he deliberately chose not to 'speak' the words aloud.

# I don't agree with double-dipping #

Daniel snorted so loud that Mateo leant over to read the tablet too.

" The punishment was found adequate. The guilty may leave the pit," Mateo declared, making it quite obvious he was taking that instruction from Dean's typed words.

Castiel rose to his feet and steadily, if a little carefully, ascended the stairs and retook his seat of judgement.

"The Pack has paid for its error of judgement with the blood of its Grandé. The eviction therefore stands. At four pm tomorrow, the land upon which Sioux Falls is built will be razed," Ophriel announced, with no little satisfaction. "Now we address the individual responsibility of the City Councillors in this matter."

The original two Alpha guards 'encouraged' the Betas back into the centre of the pit.

"You, the guilty, will now be sentenced for the heresy that was performed in your City, under your auspices," Ophriel announced. "If any of you can honestly protest your innocence, speak now."

None of the councillors spoke, though all twisted their features into odd shapes as they struggled to form words with their mouths that somehow never emerged as sounds.

# I thought this was a trial. Where are their lawyers? #

"None will speak for them. In Pack Law, an unsuccessful lawyer would face the same sentence as his client. It would take a supremely arrogant or stupid lawyer to stand with the guilty. You note they have not spoken in their own defence? That is because the Primáres use their pheromones to enforce a geas of honesty on all who speak in the pit. Ophriel couched his question so that only a person genuinely convinced of their own innocence can speak at all. It saves a lot of time."

# Condemned by silence #

"Indeed," Daniel agreed.

# It feels wrong and unfair to me. A trial should allow for a defence. #

Instead of arguing the point, Daniel flowed to his feet and descended from the Dias, to the muttered surprise of the gathered audience. Ophriel paused at his mate's approach, looking equally startled, but he offered Daniel an obsequious bow. "How may I serve the goddess?"

Daniel peered down into the pit. "Which of these creatures considers itself most senior?" he demanded coolly .

"The obese one on the right," Ophriel answered.

Daniel fixed his glare directly at the indicated Beta. Noting his specific attention on that particular guilty, one of the Alphas moved to grasp the man by the shoulder and shove him forwards so forcefully the man tripped and fell to his knees.

"Tell me," Daniel demanded. "For what specific reason did you personally allow this vile heretical performance. Choose one word and choose it wisely."

"SPEAK!" Ophriel roared.

"Money," the Beta gasped, his eyes widening with horror as his own mouth betrayed him.

"And, tell me also, did you know that the Omegá used in the performance would do so under duress?"

"Yes."

"That he would be drugged?"

"Yes."

"That the Alphas would also be drugged?"

"Yes," the Beta choked, and all around him the other Betas were milling with fear, understanding perhaps that the charges they had been condemned under were no longer the sole charges that would be punished.

"And did you all know and agree to this sexual abuse?"

"It wasn't abuse. Everyone knows all you Omegáres are dirty little sluts. You can't rape a whore," one of the other Betas protested furiously.

A roar of fury thrummed through the entire hall, not only that such filth had been spoken but that it had been said to Daniel himself.

Daniel merely turned to look questioningly at the Dias, silently asking if Dean wished him to ask more of the Betas.

Dean slowly shook his head.

Without even glancing again into the pit, Daniel returned to his place next to Dean.

"You did not wish to listen to their justifications or excuses after all?" Daniel questioned softly.

Dean finished tapping his stylus on the tablet and then offered it to Daniel to show him the words he had begun typing before Daniel had even return to his side.

# It seemed unfair they could not speak. But, I quickly understood the only thing preventing their defence was their own guilty conscience. #

Daniel nodded solemnly.

" We consider that listening to the excuses of a condemned man is not only a pointless exercise but an unnecessarily cruel one. In listening, we offer an illusion of hope that does not exist. If the man had anything to say that might genuinely have helped his case, he would already have said it. Because he is guilty, in speaking he has only condemned himself further. You see now, perhaps, that the discouragement of their 'defence' was actually intended as a kindness. They are to die anyway, Dean. Is there really much point in building multilayered facets to their punishment?"

# I feel ashamed for doubting you. I've made it worse for them, haven't I?#

"All you have done is revealed more truth. You are not responsible for the consequences of that truth. It is important to me that you feel welcome to question anything, Dean. I understand that our ways are alien to you. Never hesitate to ask for clarification."

# I wish I hadn't done it, anyway. It was bad enough thinking that shit had been done for politics or religion. Knowing I went through that just because of simple greed is far worse. #

"As you get older, Dean, you'll realise that most everything in life is ultimately driven by money. Money confers power, and the desire for power is at the root of most unacceptable behaviour."

# They will be sentenced to death? #

"Heretics always burn, Dean. Though I don't doubt the Primáres will now also call for them to be impaled also, since there has now been clear admission that they were complicit in your abuse."

"We could just impale them inside the city and let them burn on pyramids," Joshua suggested.

"I can't see the point," Mateo argued. "The city will be empty. What's the point of displaying them without witnesses? If no one is going to see it done, why bother with the dramatics? Just pear them now, then chain them in the city to burn tomorrow and be done with it."

Dean felt nauseous but knew his moment to 'save' the Betas had come and gone before Castiel had descended the pit. At least, he consoled himself, the executions would be relatively quick ones.

"With the permission of you all, I would like to confer a personal gift to each condemned," Daniel said suddenly, his voice unnaturally cold. "I believe I shall offer them an opportunity to save themselves from the flames."

Dean shivered, as Daniel explained his intention in detail, his tone flat and cruel.

It seemed Daniel sincerely objected to having been called a 'dirty little slut' in his own Pack Hall.

And Dean appreciated that, and didn't even really have an issue with the executions themselves, but he really didn't think he could agree to support Daniel's unexpected suggestion. Wasn't the idea completely at odds with Daniel's own admission that offering false hope was unjustified cruelty? Daniel had told him he had the right to veto and he was damned well going to find out if it was true. He could accept the death by fire. He even was failing to find sufficient personal objection to the idea of the nasty bastards getting a dose of their own medicine with a 'pear' shoved up their asses.

But the 'mercy' of the bonesaws was, frankly, a sickly evil idea that he would not support at all and honestly couldn't have imagined being something Daniel would ever have suggested.

He was so busy trying to type out his objection that it took a few moments for him to register the low, awed murmurs of the crowd and, when he glanced outwards, he saw that every Pack member had slipped from their seats and were now kneeling on the floor instead. Startled and confused, he turned to Daniel for an explanation and immediately understood the source of everyone's consternation.

Daniel's eyes were gold.

It was not just a change of iris colour from green to gold, it was absolute. His entire eye sockets were filled with blazing light, removing any potential of dismissing the phenomenon as mere biological luminescence.

It took all of Dean's willpower not to drop to his knees himself.

Suddenly the change in Daniel's voice and his suddenly fluid moral code made a fuck load more sense.

The being inside Daniel simply stared at Dean, its terrible inhuman gaze seeming like a judgement, though its expressionless features made it impossible to know whether he stood condemned or not.

"You are not as expected," it said, in the same cold, unfamiliar tone, its words sounding more puzzled than annoyed. "You are not as I foresaw you would be. I am unfamiliar with uncertainty.

"A stone drops in a still pond and ripples form. They flow predictably. An Omegá is muted and his voice is gone, his Flores is open and insatiable, his reason is lost. Yet there you sit, and you 'speak' and you reason and you even decide to forgive your mate for rejecting you as a 'mutilated whore'. You are proving to be...irritatingly... unpredictable. An agent of Chaos. Perhaps it was a mistake to form my avatar of Winchester clay."

Dean blinked with astonishment, wishing he could speak (though possibly asking a deity what the fuck it was talking about wouldn't be the smartest move).

And when, exactly, had Castiel called him a 'mutilated whore'?

Fucking BASTARD, scum sucking, son of a bitch!

Suddenly double-dipping felt like a damned good idea after all.

But Dean had a feeling goddesses probably weren't open to enlightening two-way conversations and, anyway, he couldn't possibly see how he might expect a goddess to patiently wait for him to type out his side of the conversation.

It seemed the Omadonna agreed.

Daniel's right hand, bathed in a golden aura, reached out and touched Dean's throat.

The touch felt like a jolt of fire, scaldingly hot, knifing into his neck and chest, then burning through his insides like a flow of searing lava, flooding into every part of his body.

The heat, though brief, was so intense that Dean thought he might spontaneously combust.

"Owww. FUCK," he yelled in automatic protest.

Then he froze in shock, as did every other human being in the room.

Daniel, or at least the thing wearing Daniel, rose to its feet and looked sternly down at Dean.

"None can hear me, save you. The mutilation of your vessel has failed to achieve its purpose. The ripples from the stones that have fallen have flowed in unexpected ways. You cannot survive what is now to come in a broken vessel, so I choose to repair it. Do not mistake my act as a kindness, Dean. I am not changing the direction of travel. I am merely unpicking some unnecessary threads from my tapestry to allow for a new path to take you there.

"And I am bored of these Betas, Dean. Pear them, burn them, let their ash scatter in the wind. If you _must_ twist your hands, do so in concern for the sadly manipulated Alpha pups not these corrupt pit beasts who are beyond saving. But do gift the Betas my sawblades. You owe me that much amusement for the trouble you have caused to me."

The gold light flared in Daniel's eyes, then abruptly vanished.

Daniel folded at the knees would have fallen had Dean not leapt to his feet and caught him, firmly, with hands strong and sure, with arms that no long shook with nerve damage.

"You're healed, Dean. Completely. The Omadonna himself has healed you," Joshua gasped.

Dean looked down upon himself and staggered uncertainly at the sight of his undocked mound.

"You are blessed by the Omadonna himself, _Domina_ ," Mateo stated firmly, making a point of slipping off his throne and kneeling at Dean's feet.

Daniel and Joshua met each other's eyes, nodded imperceptibly at each other and then joined Mateo on the floor.

"Work it," Mateo muttered. "Work the damned room, Dean. This is your chance."

Dean stood there, frozen in shock, seeing every Pack Member bowed in worship, their eyes all dropped in awe.

Save for Castiel's.

Whilst the Primá knelt with his body in a posture of humility, his eyes were fixed firmly on Dean, their blue orbs blazing with Primal fire and unmistakable lust.

Only that lust no longer seemed honest or even welcome.

 _Oh, you fucker_ , Dean prayed silently to the Omadonna. It was indeed no 'act of kindness' at all, was it?

Because, just at the point when he had wavered, had seen Castiel's brave acceptance of the flogging as an act worthy of softening his resistance, by returning Dean to a state of unmutilated perfection, the Omadonna had stolen Castiel's ability to ever prove himself able to see Dean as a person rather than a 'mutilated whore'.


	95. Chapter Ninety

"Ophriel," Dean said, deliberately bowing his head in the direction of the Primá with a show of polite respect. "Please rise, I would speak with you directly if I may."

The elder Primá rose remarkably gracefully to his feet, though Dean did wince slightly at the sound of Ophriel's knees cracking as he straightened.

"I am at your service, Domina," Ophriel said respectfully, though his eyes were twinkling as he repeated the honorific Mateo had accorded.

Clearly his hearing was ageing better than his joints.

"The Omadonna is weary of these proceedings and wishes for these guilty to be sentenced now," Dean explained. "His words to me were to 'Pear them, Burn them and let their ash scatter in the wind'."

"The Omadonna's will be done," Ophriel agreed easily.

"They are to burn in their city tomorrow," Dean continued calmly, "yet the Holy Mother asks that a bone saw is gifted to each of these guilty when they are left shackled. This 'mercy' is his specific request."

Ophriel's eyes widened, but he nodded his compliance.

"And before the flames are lit, the entire city is to be scoured for innocents. All creatures feathered, furred or scaled are to be rescued." Dean deliberately turned his attention to Raphael. "Grandé," he said.

"Domina," Raphael acknowledged, looking uncomfortable with the term but suitably cowed by the bizarreness of the situation to accept his apparent requirement to use it.

"You have many idle Alphas. Perhaps they may be charged with this favour to the goddess," Dean suggested, though his tone was not one of request.

"As the goddess commands," Raphael agreed, with a shrug of confusion.

Dean acknowledged his agreement with a nonchalant wave and turned to face the pit, dismissing him with casual rudeness.

Behind him, he heard Mateo stifle a giggle.

He was in no way even a fraction as relaxed as he appeared. He felt as taut with nerves as an overstrung instrument and doubted it would take much to make him snap into a gibbering wreck. He wanted nothing more than to run out of the hall, shut himself in a small room and shake and sob in reaction to what had happened.

Yet Mateo had told him to work the room, to take control, to grab the opportunity of how stunned everyone was by the Omadonna's physical manifestation and the apparent miracle that had occurred in front of their eyes.

And Dean knew Mateo was right.

An opportunity like this might never come again for him, or for _any_ Omegá, so he indeed owed it to himself and to the Queens to 'work it'.

So he forced himself to remain apparently nonchalant as, in the pit, the sentenced Betas were 'Peared'. He didn't flinch as each man was cuffed at the wrists, then bent over for the insertion of a large metal Pear into their ass. He didn't even react when the handles were slowly turned to open the pears, though the process caused each Beta to sob and wail and even scream in reaction.

He reminded himself these were the men who had forced him to 'birth' an entire universe from his vagina.

And though the memory didn't make him feel any better about witnessing their torture it did, at least, allow him to _appear_ indifferent to their pain.

The Betas were 'encouraged' back into the tunnel, returning to their cells sobbing loudly, unable to do more than hobble awkwardly with a hunched, wide-legged, staggering gait.

Almost immediately, the Alphas emerged from the tunnel, their pale faces stark, their eyes wide with horror, and it was clear their arrival had been deliberately timed so they had passed the Betas en route and witnessed for themselves the wicked devices inserted inside them.

Dean looked down to see the faces of his abusers, of his rapists, of those who had masturbated over him on the stage in Falls Park, then used him as a drinks dispenser, and then mounted him like a glory hole with drunken enthusiasm on the night of Sam's birthday.

He looked into the pit to see the faces of those monsters.

Those rapists.

Those guilty.

But all he saw was a half dozen terrified pups.

They were _just_ pups.

Stupid, manipulated, idiotic pups.

Their minds and bodies addled with hormones and Azazel's drugs and Azazel's alcohol and everything else that had mind fucked them since the day they had presented as Alphas in the wickedness of the Beta world.

Poor little fucked up bastards had never had a chance, had they?

And Dean remembered Joshua's suggestion they should be sentenced to be barrack whores, given at least that chance to be redeemed rather than face castration and impalement, offered that much mercy because of their youth and the ways they had been chemically manipulated.

But all Dean could think about was Sam.

How sweet little Sammy had also been so corrupted by his biology and the Betas that he'd turned into the terrible monster 'Sam'.

Wasn't that also a blame that should fall, ultimately, upon the Grandés of the Packs?

Three hundred years earlier, when the first Betas had broken with the Packs and claimed their independence, why had not the Packs made it a condition of that independence that all Alpha sons had to be passed over on presentation?

The problem of rut rage would never have developed at all.

The writing of that one little codicil into the declaration of beta independence and no Omegá would 'ever' have suffered abuse.

If anyone should be on trial, it should be the Grandés as descendants of the ones who had fucked everything up so royally in the first place.

Which was probably the point the Omadonna had been making when referring to the Alphas as 'sadly manipulated'.

Ophriel stepped forward to the edge of the pit.

"You, the guilty, will now be sentenced for Omegá abuse," he announced. "If any can honestly protest your innocence, speak now."

Only Max Miller spoke, and his voice was tearful and weak, little more than a terrified whisper, "We didn't mean to do it. We were drunk. We're sorry. We're all really sorry."

"Sorry you did it, or sorry you are brought to account?" Ophriel demanded.

Max flinched. "Both," he admitted reluctantly.

"Then you admit your guilt," Ophriel replied. "Pack Law does not care for reasons or excuses. You are tried for your deeds alone. Do any of you deny the deeds were done?"

None of the Alphas spoke.

Ophriel nodded, though he seemed a little saddened himself at their failure to offer any defence. Dean was pretty sure that Ophriel too saw the boys for what they truly were, just stupid little fucked-up pups.

"You are found guilty. Sentence will be passed," Ophriel announced. He turned and bowed to Dean. "Domina?" He questioned, offering the Omegáres the opportunity to offer the actual judgement.

It was the point, Dean knew, that he should say, 'we will confer' and return to the Dias.

He did not.

"The Omadonna offers pardon to the guilty. They will receive no punishment by this conclave."

He ignored the loud gasps of shock amongst the Pack members, and the stunned amazement on the faces of the Primáres (and hoped that the Queens behind him were at least faking a unified acceptance of his words).

He addressed the Alphas who were clutching at each other in sobbing, confused relief.

"Your pardon is freely given. Redemption however must be earned. No Primá will wish to accept you into their Pack unless you are willing to redeem yourself through humble service. Do you understand?"

The Alphas nodded with desperate eagerness and all, without prompting, dropped to their knees and lowered their foreheads to the floor in a demonstration of complete submission.

Dean suspected it was more the several days they had spent with Primá pheromones seeping into their skin, calming their hormonal imbalances, that drove their behaviour than true acceptance of _his_ authority over them, but even so it felt like a vindication of his decision.

"The judgement of the Omadonna cannot be wrong," Ophriel said, "but I am uncertain any Pack will be willing to accept them as mere penitents."

Dean acknowledged the point with a nod, but turned his attention, for the first time, to Castiel.

"Grandé?"

Castiel blinked. "Domina?"

"It would please the Omadonna if you would take these pups into your Pack as penitents striving for redemption."

Castiel hesitated just a moment too long for Dean's liking, so he continued, "You are uniquely qualified to offer sympathy to the confusion of these lost pups, Castiel. After all, you yourself have been known to consider an Omegá as no more than a... what was the term? Oh, yes, I seem to recall the phrase was 'mutilated whore'."

Dean watched the colour drain out of Castiel's face with satisfaction.

He turned back to Ophriel, "I believe that is settled."

"Domina," Ophriel agreed, his eyes bright with humour. "Your will be done."

Dean turned towards the Dias where the Queens were indeed regarding him with calm curiosity rather than shocked outrage, so he hoped they weren't just waiting to ream his ass in private for what he'd just done. It probably had been the shortest conclave in history. It wasn't even lunchtime and all the trials were...

He turned back towards Ophriel with a frown.

"What of Azazel Al'asfar?"

"There is insufficient left of him to try."

"I understand that," Dean agreed. "But a decision must be made, regardless."

"Grandé Raphael has expressed interest in keeping the remains."

"I wish to see him."

"You probably don't," Ophriel warned him quietly. "It's a distressing vision."

Dean suspected it was a totally vomit-worthy vision.

"Even so," Dean said.

Ophriel nodded down into the pit and one of the Alphas disappeared down the tunnel. He reemerged a few minutes later rolling a trolley on which Azazel was mounted on a peg.

Dean dry heaved.

"We are advised he could live like this for years," Ophriel advised him, his expression haunted.

"Lucifer is a sick man," Dean said. "As too, it seems, is Raphael."

"Evidently," Ophriel agreed. "I admit my horror wars with satisfaction at the doing of it. But to keep it alive is..."

"Monstrous. It should be terminated," Dean said firmly.

"Its fate was determined in a Primá Conclave," Raphael insisted. "The judgement of the Omadonna is not relevant in its case."

Dean narrowed his eyes in fury at the Primá's arrogant dismissal.

But Dean was no Omegá Queen, no pampered princess. He was not even a 'mutilated whore' any longer. He was Dean Winchester, son of the Bounty Hunter John Winchester, and he needed no man's help or permission to do what needed to be done.

He reached for his hip, released the ceremonial dagger from his harness, hefted it into his hand to check its balance, carefully judged the angle and distance and then, as he had done endless times with his Sire, he threw the knife with fast, precision.

It flew through the air like an arrow and embedded itself deeply, right between Azazel Al'asfar's eyes.

Then Dean turned to the stunned Raphael with a sneer.

"The judgement of the Omadonna is _always_ relevant," he announced.

Behind him, the three Queens rose to their feet, descended elegantly from the Dias and joined Dean at the edge of the pit.

"This Conclave is over," Daniel announced coolly. "We shall retire."

He deliberately linked arms with Dean in a show of solidarity and began to lead him towards the ante-chamber.

But then he paused for a moment, looked back over his shoulder and smiled at Raphael.

"Be a dear, Rafe, and make sure the Domina's knife is cleaned and returned. I believe he may require it again."


	96. Chapter Ninety One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a little short on time, tonight, so I'll have to leave Castiel's side of this scene until tomorrow. ;)

Daniel urged them all to swiftly return to his quarters with him, rather than risk speaking in the antechamber where they might possibly be overheard by others.

"Fine by me," Joshua said. "I need a drink and I'm definitely not referring to espresso."

The four Omegáres slipped though the secret door at the back of the room into the cool, dark chill of the passageway and made their way over the cobbled stones to the back entrance to Daniel's apartment.

"I don't know whether to be as impressed as fuck or pissed as hell," Mateo told Dean as they entered Daniel's parlour and seated themselves. "You really have to show me how to do that knife thing," he continued, "because that was the coolest thing I have ever seen. I've honestly never seen Raphael struck dumb before. But did you really have to kill it? I had plans for that thing."

"That 'thing' was a human being," Dean said. "And I don't care if he was an evil fuck, he didn't deserve to live like that. No one could ever do anything that could possibly justify a punishment like that."

"You seemed perfectly happy to agree to the saw blades," Mateo pointed out snootily. "It hardly gives you the higher ground."

Perhaps if Dean hadn't already witnessed the adversarial relationship between Joshua and Mateo, he might have felt more defensive. As it was, he was pretty sure the little Queen simply enjoyed arguing, so he just shrugged and said, "I just saw my friend taken over by an actual goddamned goddess, who not only healed my throat but actually managed to regrow my cock and balls in two seconds flat. So when he told me what he wanted done to the Betas, I was hardly going to refuse."

"Good call," Joshua agreed.

Daniel said nothing, just poured them all a generous splash of brandy and handed it out, but the small pleased smile on his face evidenced the fact he'd heard Dean call him his 'friend'.

"I've seen the Omadonna speak through Chuck a dozen times or more," Joshua said, after gulping the brandy down and waving for a refill. "But I've never seen or even heard of the Omadonna actually healing someone through his vessel. I honestly didn't think the goddess had the ability to physically change something on the mortal plane like that."

"He doesn't," Daniel said, refilling all of their glasses, then seating himself with a sigh. "The Omadonna can't perform that kind of miracle."

"Not wanting to argue but..." Dean said, gesturing at his own groin. "That certainly looks a bit fucking miraculous to me."

Daniel smiled. "I'm not denying what was so evidently done," he explained. "I'm saying it wasn't a physical miracle as much as a temporal one. Although the goddess was in my head, rather than the other way around, I was still aware of what my body was being used to do. The Omadonna didn't really heal you at all, Dean. He merely changed the way time flowed through the wounded parts of your body by encouraging your cells to regenerate faster. The Omadonna's only true power is reproductive. He used that power to 'birth' replacement cells, over and over, until you finished restoring yourself."

"So I actually healed myself?"

Daniel nodded his agreement. "If you hadn't been capable of healing in the fullness of time, the Goddess would have achieved nothing. He couldn't have restored a severed limb, for instance. Still, we couldn't have asked for more, could we? Not only is your voice restored, and I must say it is such a lovely voice that it was a crime to take it from you however briefly, but the persona of The Domina will now be set in legend. You are suddenly thrust into a position of genuine power and, perhaps more importantly, appear to have the intelligence and bravery to use it. We couldn't have imagined a better way to launch you into the Packs."

The sound of a wild, primal howl suddenly rolled through the building, reverberating through the walls and rattling the windows.

"What the fuck was that?" Dean demanded.

"I suspect that was Meg removing the packing from Castiel's nose," Daniel replied, staring up at the ceiling thoughtfully. "I imagine he was just hit immediately with your true scent for the first time."

"Embarrassing," Joshua mumbled. 

"Uncomfortable," Mateo agreed. "Twice in one day and it isn't even lunchtime yet. Is it lunchtime yet? I swear my stomach thinks my throat's been cut, Daniel. I appreciate we've all had an exciting morning but it's not a valid excuse to starve me. Your hospitality is sorely lacking."

Daniel sighed, picked up his phone and made a quick call to Morgana, requesting lunch to be served in his parlour and also suggesting she sent a cleaner to the floor above and supplied the Grandé's quarters with a couple of changes of bed linen and some additional towels.

"It will smell like a frat house in there tonight," he said, as he hung up the call. "Maybe I should offer Meg a room on the Queen's floor until he calms down a bit."

"Huh?" Dean asked, totally bewildered.

"Poor bastard's probably going to be on a hair-trigger for days now you've started him off," Mateo explained, with a wink. "A Primá has such a sensitive nose, he can sense a 'true mate' from across a city, let alone from just a floor away. Now your signature's broadcasting loud and clear, Castiel's in for a rocky few days unless you're in the mood to claim him and put him out of his misery."

"This is officially closed for business permanently," Dean announced, gesturing down at his groin. "Now I've got my control back, I swear the only thing my Flores wants to do with Castiel's cock is bite the fucker off at the root."

"Woah," Mateo said, smirking evilly. "You are seriously pissed with him, aren't you?"

"I honestly don't get it," Joshua admitted. "He's so very pretty and he's clearly infatuated with you, Dean."

"He called me a 'mutilated whore'," Dean snarled.

"But he still then decided he wanted to mate with you, anyway," Joshua pointed out. "Which is kind of sweet, really. In fact, getting him on your hook that well even despite his own initial objections is a hell of lot more impressive than him simply tripping over his tongue with instant lust. And now you've got a shiny born-again cunt he's probably going out of his mind with wanting you even more. I honestly don't see the problem."

"You wouldn't," Mateo said, curling his pretty nose in distain. "But Dean isn't a slut like you. He wants a mate who treats him with respect, not one that just crawls after him begging to get his cock warmed."

"You're missing the point, as usual," Joshua replied airily. "Power is power. I don't give a damn if all Jophiel wants is my cunt rather than my sparkling conversation. The important thing is that he wants something that only I have and he will literally do anything to ensure I don't cut him off. That's power, Matty, however you want to spin it."

Mateo considered the point, then shrugged his reluctant agreement.

"If you two have quite finished bickering, we need to explain about Crowley," Daniel interrupted.

"What about Crowley?" Dean asked.

He listened in disbelief as Daniel explained about Castiel's decision to gift him the Alpha and a small staff of Beta servants so that he could move into his own apartment on the Queen's floor.

"Your own pet Alpha, just like my Randy," Joshua added. "It's just like having your own favorite sofa on a leash."

Daniel frowned thoughtfully. 

"I'm not sure, now," he admitted. "It made sense before the events of this morning but if the goddess really has restored the cells of your body, Dean, then there's a strong argument for claiming you have had your virginity restored too. I definitely believe the Primáres will consider you to have been 'purified' by the touch of the Omadonna. In which case, it would probably be counterproductive to voluntarily throw that renewed raised status away again."

"Point," Mateo agreed glumly. "Your bride-price has probably just gone through the roof. The idea of an unmated Omegá having an Alpha was already a scandalous one, and really it was only the fact you had already been mounted several times before that made it pointless for anyone to overtly object. But unmated virgin Omegáres definitely don't sit on Alphas, so maybe it's a bad idea now."

Dean frowned. "Okay, putting aside the 'closed for business' sign I've hung on my Flores anyway, are you honestly saying that Castiel was only okay with me having Crowley because I was already so 'spoilt' it wouldn't make any difference me having yet one more Alpha cock in my ass? A 'too late to shut the stable door now,' situation?"

"Oooh, I hadn't thought about it like that," Daniel admitted. "It doesn't seem so good if you look at it from that point of view. But I genuinely do think he was just trying to offer you the kindness of some independence."

Dean nodded. "Well, admittedly nobody would have conceived of me ever getting miraculously returned to a 'virgin' state," he agreed, "so I accept the probability you're right. What bothers me is the suggestion anything has changed just because I've 'miraculously' been returned to 'purity'. It's just more of the same bullshit, isn't it? What the hell business is it of any Primá whether any Omegá is a virgin in the first place? As far as I can tell, the Primáres are the biggest sluts out there. They're hardly in the best place to be casting stones. 

"I've got to be honest and say the idea of taking a bounce on Crowley's lap is far from the top of my priority list, but I'll tell you now that if I do want to do it, it's my choice, my decision and my body and fuck anyone who thinks otherwise."

Joshua clapped loudly. "Well said. If the Omadonna restored your virginity along with everything else, and I really think that's just a semantic point anyway, I can't believe it was done purely for the purpose of stopping you playing with Crowley."

"Well of course a fully paid up member of 'sluts r us' wouldn't believe that," Mateo sneered. 

Joshua raised an eyebrow archly. "You think you are so clever, Matty, but let me tell you something you don't know, shall I? Having Randolph wasn't my idea."

"Ignore Matty," Daniel said. "We all know Randolph was Jophiel's gift to you and that's nobody's business but yours."

Joshua smiled sweetly at Daniel. "Whilst I appreciate your support, that wasn't my point. Jophiel might have given me Randy, but the idea was Chuck's." He smirked at the astonished expressions of his fellow Queens. "Yes. I thought that would shock you. And I'll tell you something else, whilst I'm at it. Who do you think suggested the particular nature of the persona I chose to portray?

"Now, don't get me wrong. Chuck had to work with what he got with me and I don't deny always having a level of natural...lustiness. It's certainly been no hardship for me to play the role. But the bottom line is that Chuck always wanted me to wear Jophiel down enough that he'd eventually give me a Queen's Alpha. He needed someone to set the precedent. He just happened to luck out with a particularly enthusiastic student."

"But why?" Daniel asked.

Joshua shrugged. "Well you know Chuck. I never really did get a straight answer. He just kept spouting crap about ponds and stones and ripples and, honestly, I was enjoying myself so much I never really cared too much about why I was doing it. But when the goddess spoke this morning and said that stuff about a stone causing ripples, I suddenly figured out that Chuck must always have been trying to set it up so that Dean could do this. Don't you agree?"

"Chuck 'has' always been the preferred vessel for the Omadonna to speak through," Daniel agreed thoughtfully. "Perhaps that's what he meant by saying Dean is his chosen Avatar. Maybe you're supposed to be his next prophet, Dean, after Chuck finally passes through the veil, and maybe he wants that prophet to have a Queen's Alpha for some reason."

Dean frowned in confusion. "I thought Chuck was supposed to be top Omegá dog anyway. Why didn't Chuck just appoint himself a Queen's Alpha if it matters that much?"

"Chuck is very...asexual and Cain is not a man of lust either. Their relationship is quite unusual. Although Chuck bore Cain five fine pups, I have the distinct impression their congress was always done dutifully rather that with any passion. I can't see that Chuck would ever have consented to accept the role of slut queen himself. That's why he needed Joshua," Mateo said.

"You'd think the Omadonna would have learned his lesson then," Dean snorted. "He should have learned from Chuck that Winchester 'clay' isn't easy to mould."

"What do you mean?" Daniel asked, his expression puzzled.

"Chuck's my grandsire's brother, Charles Winchester," Dean said, guilelessly. "Apparently Omegáres run in our family."

"It can't be true," Daniel said, though it definitely seemed to be the idea he was doubting rather than Dean's honesty. "Castiel would never have even hesitated to claim you if he'd known you to be his mother's kin. Castiel worships his mother. Your shared blood would have guaranteed his unswerving adoration even if you'd arrived fresh from a rut house and madder than Claire."

Dean shrugged. "Chuck probably doesn't even know I exist," he said easily. "He was already in Pack Land before my sire was even born."

"Of course. That must be it," Daniel agreed, though he still appeared distinctly troubled by the idea.

"Well I think it explains a lot," Joshua said firmly. "It's probably even the reason you and Castiel are true mates. You share DNA, don't you? That's probably why your signatures resonate so well together. When Castiel finds out..."

"NO," Dean said firmly. "It's bad enough already. The last thing I need is him having yet another reason to like the 'idea' of me."

"Ohhh, I get it now," Joshua said, his eyes softening with genuine sympathy. "I thought you just wanted a Jophiel, but you really want an Ophriel, don't you?"

"I don't want a Primá at all," Dean denied angrily.

Joshua raised an eyebrow doubtfully, but let the matter drop primarily because a soft knock on the door announced that lunch had arrived.

"After we've eaten, do you wish for me to show you the apartment I've prepared for you? Or shall I advise Castiel that he may have his Alpha back?"

Dean frowned thoughtfully, considering his options.

He experimentally squeezed the muscles of his Flores and felt them tighten firmly on his demand. 

"I suppose," he said, slowly, "that it wouldn't hurt to at least look at the apartment."

He released his taut Flores, letting it open enough around his bridle that a faint musk of slick rose from his groin and dissipated into the air.

Above his head, a Primá roared in response.

"Oops," he said, smiling innocently.

Daniel rolled his eyes. "At this rate, forget the bedding, I'll probably have to fumigate the damned carpets up there."


	97. Chapter Ninety Two

Although he knew admitting it would probably only serve to make him look totally self absorbed, Castiel had never been particularly convinced of his own attractiveness.

And it was a problem for him.

Something that frequently dwelled on his mind when sleep proved elusive in those lonely spaces between midnight and dawn.

It wasn't that he was incapable of looking in a mirror and seeing that he had good bone structure and regular features that he knew many considered handsome but he was equally conscious that the majority of Pack members found his blue eyes intensely disturbing.

And although his status as a Grandé Alpha Primá came with an iron clad guarantee of an embarrassing amount of sexual favours, he had felt it was probably the primary reason it was improbable he would ever find real, genuine, love.

Meg was his only confidant in the subject.

Since the day she had first snuck past the defences of both the Pack Hall guards and his own heart, Meg had been the only person he had shared his fears and hopes with. She was the only person who truly knew of his unwavering desire to find a true soul mate and of his romantic heart's insistence that his destined bride would be perfect in every way.

And she was fully and fiercely supportive of his quest to find that Bride.

Though, admittedly, that support was usually accompanied by rolling eyes, intense mockery and more than one swift boot to his backside whenever she felt he was being unnecessarily obtuse and 'unable to see the nose on his own face'.

Meg was a great proponent of 'tough love'.

Which was why Castiel had approached the conclave with a great deal of trepidation. He had spent two days vacillating between moments of almost gleeful joy at having so improbably found 'the one' and intense depression over how badly he had fucked their first meeting up. He had agonised for hours over choosing the right flowers to send to express both his sincere regret and his ardent admiration, only to then spend the remainder of that day second guessing his choices.

Had he sent too many?

Had he not sent enough?

Perhaps Dean hated purple.

Perhaps Dean suffered from hay fever and the pollen had sent him into paroxysms of sneezing misery.

After several hours of listening to him fret, Meg had declared him an 'irritating bipolar idiot' and had suggested he sent jewellery instead.

And it was Meg who suggested he asked Daniel's opinion on the most appropriate gift, when he was faced with so many options of styles and metals and gemstones that he'd almost just thrown his hands up in despair and bought Dean an entire window display.

'Less is more,' Meg had insisted, telling him that one perfect carefully considered piece would be worth a thousand generic baubles.

And, even so, purchasing Dean a unique, hand-crafted piece from Paris and managing, improbably, to get it delivered to America in under 24 hours (only truly possible by the purchase of three finished individual $15,000 necklaces that the Dior craftsmen immediately butchered and welded into a single bridle harness) had been a traumatic experience.

It had seemed to him that such a piece was too 'personal' an item for a first hope gift. Not unlike buying intimate lingerie. It felt too blatantly sexual to be appropriate. Too crass.

'Dior is never crass,' Meg had retorted impatiently, 'and of course it's sexual. You're a Primá. He's an Omegá. It's going to be pretty fucking obvious to him what you're after.'

Which was why Castiel was pretty much laying the entire blame for his current situation on his wife.

If Dean hadn't been wearing the harness during the conclave, Castiel was convinced he wouldn't have made such a complete and utter fool of himself.

He had been so completely overcome by the fact that Dean was wearing his hope gift, like a promise of potential forgiveness, that he had been shaking like a leaf with barely contained nerves by the time he had knelt between Dean's knees.

Although the numbing of his sinuses had blocked the Omegá's scent, by the time his face had been inches from Dean's mound, his heart had been pounding in his chest and sweat had been dripping between his shoulder blades, and that near to Dean it was impossible to ignore the fact that the Omegá was as large and muscular as Benny just as it was no longer possible to ignore the scars on his mound that evidenced his mutilation.

And whilst either or both of those facts would have screamed imperfection to him just 48 hours earlier, Dean in the flesh was just... just... glorious.

In that moment, so close to the Omegá that it took all of his willpower not to turn his head and lick a trail up the inside of Dean's thighs towards his Flores, the idea that anything could ever detract from Dean's perfection was ludicrous.

It was torture to be that close and know he was permitted to do nothing save press a brief, impersonal kiss on his flesh, even though his hope gift was wrapped around Dean's waist and hips, its presence screaming to Castiel that this Omegá is 'mine, mine, MINE.'

He'd tried so had to remain, aloof, dignified, above the call of fleshly desire.

And then Dean had touched him and he had fallen.

Explosively.

And he'd never forget staggering to his feet in disgrace and, unable to look at Dean at all, had met Daniel's gaze. Daniel who had looked at him with an expression of pained, politely offended distain; a look he'd last seen on the face of Colette when a puppy belonging to Balthazar had piddled on an expensive rug.

But though he couldn't forget the look on Daniel's face, he had little or no recollection whatsoever of how he had managed to slink off the Dias in disgrace to join his fellow Primáres on the platform below. The whole scenario had been lost to a nightmare blur of pure mortification.

Which had been added to immensely when the Queens rose, declaring a recess until the situation was 'handled', only to realise that there was no safe way for Dean to step off his throne and, obviously, simply calling servants to mop the floor between his legs whilst he was still seated would be equally unacceptable.

And instead of handling the issue discretely (in the remote possibility some of the gathered Pack Members hadn't realised what had happened), one of Ophriel's Alphas had decided to solve the problem 'heroically' by physically throwing himself onto the floor, face first into Castiel's ejaculate, to form a protective human footstool which had enabled Dean to step down off the Dias safely.

The following forty minutes had felt like the longest of Castiel's life.

But his horror hadn't been the taunting mockery of his brothers, Jophiel and Raphael, who had displayed a juvenile glee in his disgrace by suggesting their mother had clearly forgotten to 'housetrain him' sufficiently.

Their words had slipped off his back like water.

All he cared about was whether Dean would return to the conclave at all. Castiel accepted, reluctantly, that there was no way on earth Dean would do so still wearing his Hope Gift. But he'd never forgive himself if his own loss of control had made the idea of attending the Conclave intolerable for the Omegá.

He wondered whether he should leave himself to make it easier for Dean to return but it felt too much like 'running away' again.

So he'd just knelt there, shaking with reaction, humiliated and horrified and so ashamed of himself he wanted to slink off and hide his disgrace.

But Dean had returned and, beyond any hope or probability, he had still been wearing the harness and the moment Castiel had seen it, had read the potential olive branch in that gesture, he'd been filled with such an overwhelming relief that suddenly he decided he didn't give a damn what anyone else thought.

Let them mock.

Although the packing in his nose prevented him from scenting him (and, if rumour were true Dean's scent had been changed temporarily anyway) Castiel now had absolutely no doubt the Dean 'was' his true mate. Because why else would Dean be prepared to offer him yet another chance if not compelled to do so by his biology?

And when the Queens passed their judgement and said he should take Ophriel's place in the pit he had wanted to cheer.

Because whilst he would have welcomed the opportunity to spare Ophriel the flogging in any circumstance, the fact it was so obviously done to please Dean was like a cherry on a cake.

Being offered an opportunity to save Ophriel 'and' also simultaneously soothe some of Dean's anger was win, win as far as he was concerned.

So despite the pain, because Crowley, the little shit, had taken more than a little satisfaction in doing the job 'right', Castiel had emerged from that pit feeling newly hope-filled and even more convinced that despite the two disastrous scenarios that had occurred so far, Dean 'would' eventually consent to become his Bride.

Castiel didn't fool himself it would be easy or swift but he was still damned positive that eventually it would come to pass.

But then the Omadonna himself had turned up and fucked him over.

Castiel knew he should be thrilled for Dean.

And he was, really, because he wasn't a total asshole. He knew the only really important thing was that Dean had been regifted his purity. Dean was now, once again, going to be seen as the most desirable Omegá in America, if not the world, and every unmated Primáre would be chasing his Flores.

Castiel was genuinely pleased for Dean (and not a little pleased for himself too, to be destined to mate an Omegá desired by so many others. He had a fresh appreciation for how a mere Primá like Ophriel always managed to appear so smugly superior even when included in a gathering of Grandés. Ophriel, too, had mated the most desirable Omegá of his generation.)

Castiel was convinced that Dean would be his mate. It was biology. They were 'true mates' after all, and no Omegá could withstand that siren call indefinitely.

Castiel decided he would be content to give the youngster some time before pressing his case and pledging his troth. He'd let Dean mature a little in the safety of the Packs and experience a little of the childhood stolen from him in Beta Land. Castiel would fill his hope chest with gifts from afar, let Dean run and play like a carefree pup for a year or two. Castiel even would stand back and let Dean flirt with all the undoubtedly numerous admirers he would now probably have because, remembering how Joshua had been, it seemed that even an Omegá as free with his favours as Jophiel's Bride had still behaved with suitable decorum on the other side of his mating bite.

And it is thus that, possibly, even without so many other factors depending on Dean and Castiel not mating immediately, it might be supposed that the Omadonna would have still been inclined to tell Dean about Castiel's ill-advised earlier judgement of him as being just another 'mutilated whore'.

Because the Omadonna had never had a great deal of tolerance for patronising, misogynistic bullshit.

It is entirely possible that the Omadonna was more than a little pissed by the fact Castiel so quickly 'forgot' his earlier shame and bounced back to the confident, arrogant belief that given enough pretty baubles and space and time to 'forget' their minor hiccups so far, Dean would have no choice except to 'eventually' come to his senses and accept his mating bite.

It is also equally possible that it was no more than a quirk of the Pierre Pack Hall's design that the sumptuous quarters for Primáres were located directly above the Queen's floor. The architects who designed the hall undoubtedly found it easier to simply mirror the lower quarters to create two floors of similarly sized apartments.

But still, there was a certain poetry to Castiel being located so conveniently when he finally appreciated the fact that the 'siren call' of a true mate might be a one-way street, but it wasn't the Omegá who would be careering down it, out of control.

Because the problem with myths and legends is that they frequently are stories told by unreliable narrators.

No story of the meeting of two true mates had ever been penned by an Omegá.

It was always a Beta who put ink to paper and described how the scent of a true mate caused a Flores to open in welcome and an Omegá to immediately fall in thrall to his destined Primá.

And, like any great lie, there was a grain of truth at its core.

The scent of a true mate 'did' always cause a Flores to unfurl in welcome.

But it only remained that way if the Omegá didn't decide to simply close it again.

As Daniel had said to Dean at their very first meeting, an Omegá 'always' had control of his Flores.

It simply suited most Omegáres to allow their Primáres to cling to the illusion that it was they who did the claiming.


	98. Chapter Ninety Three

“I come with gifts,” Morgana announced, entering the parlour of ‘Dean’s Apartment’ with four young girls and also a group of bald, unusually tall, pale, thin Betas following her like silent shadows. “These are, apparently, ‘The Domina’s Esne’.”

As soon as Morgana halted, the ‘Esne’ sank to their knees and dropped their heads subserviently in Dean’s direction. The girls simply hung back and hovered near the entrance door, waiting for their own introduction.

Each of the Esne wore an ornate gold collar from which several chains dangled. Most were just clipped to a simple white floor length shift that formed their only clothing but the central chain of each collar fastened to a long, fine dagger that hung proud in the centre of their chests, its sharp edges glinting.

Dean blinked with surprise, feeling a little guilty that he had seen several similarly garbed Betas slinking around Daniel’s quarters but had never questioned their identity or presence. Although he thought he had many excuses for being so distracted by everything else that he had paid little attention to Daniel’s servants, now he felt rude and a little ignorant that he’d spent so much time conversing with the Queens and yet had barely even glanced in the direction of their staff.

He really needed to start remembering that a lower societal status didn’t justify any individual being regarded as little more than part of the furniture. He decided to make a concerted effort to make sure every member of ‘his’ staff felt individually valued.

“That is SO not fair,” Joshua griped. “How come Dean gets ten of them? He isn’t even formally a Queen yet.”

“The Guild of Esne has always been a law into itself,” Daniel said. “Though I, too, am surprised to see a full tything in attendance, considering they merely offered two members to Dean’s service when this idea was proposed to them yesterday.”

The ten Esne remained silent and inscrutable.

It was Morgana who explained, “The entire tything arrived at the hall merely an hour ago. Although the Guild declined to send any written explanation of their change of heart in sending ten members, rather than the previously promised two, it seems likely the events of this morning’s conclave have already spread well beyond the walls of this Pack Hall.”

Daniel frowned at the Esne. “Show yourselves,” he demanded.

The ten Betas flowed gracefully to their feet and, as one, unclipped the collar chains that held their shifts, so that the fabric dropped to the floor to reveal their forms naked save for the dagger ‘necklace’ and a matching tattoo over their hearts.

Daniel narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, then nodded and visibly relaxed as though a question had been satisfactorily answered.

Dean startled. “Ummm, what… what are they?” he whispered, his tone a mix between horrified and confused.

“The Esne are neuter,” Daniel explained, eschewing Dean’s attempt at discretion by replying in a normal tone of voice. He saw no insult in the question and saw no reason why the Esne would feel any objection to the subject being discussed. “Whether originally born as male or female, they enter their Guild as prepubescents and their sexual organs, both internal and external, are sacrificed to the service of the Omadonna. It is polite and respectful, therefore, to use the pronoun ‘It’ when referring to them. It is rarely possible to identify any physical differences between them that positively establish their original genders, though those Esne who were born male are more likely to develop an unusual height because of their castration. Still, I understand they consider any question of their original gender to be offensively rude since they deliberately sacrificed themselves to attain a completely asexual state.

“All of their bodily hair is permanently removed and Esne are also all vocally mute,” Daniel continued. “The severing of their vocal chords is another part of their initiation into their Guild. We of the Packs are somewhat certain that the modern mutilation of Omegáres by Free Betas is intended to ape many of the sacred traditions of the Religious Order of Esne.”

All of the Esne made sharp, cutting gestures across their bare mounds.

“They are saying that it is an act of supreme Heresy,” Daniel translated.

One of the Esne spoke rapidly with its hands for a few moments.

Daniel nodded to it and bowed solemnly. “Indeed,” he agreed. “Your service is most honourable and greatly appreciated.”

He turned to Dean. “It says the Guild considered your sentence of the Betas found guilty of Heresy to be diabolically wicked. Heresy is somewhat of a sore point with Esne. To show their gratitude for your judgement, a full tything have chosen to sacrifice themselves to you. A ‘thank you’ to them is not necessary, but would probably be an appropriate kindness,” he added quietly.

Dean was completely bewildered, and more than a little disconcerted by the Esne, but he took Daniel’s advice regardless, turning to the Esne and bowing low.

“Thank you very much,” he said, a little awkwardly.

The ten Esne dropped graciously to their knees and dropped their foreheads to the floor then raised their heads but remained in a kneeling position.

“What exactly did you mean by them ‘sacrificing themselves’?” Dean muttered urgently.

“You see the tattoos over their hearts? The ones that look so fresh and raw that they appear newly inked?”

“The Daggers?”

Daniel nodded, “Look closer at them.”

Dean hesitantly stepped forward until he could see the tattoos clearly. On each blade, the word ‘Domina’ had been freshly inked in a flowing script.

“I don’t understand,” he gulped.

“The Esne are not Pack affiliated,” Daniel explained. “An Esne is only ever loyal to the Omadonna himself. On pledging itself to a Queen, the Esne has the name of that Queen inked onto its Guild tattoo as a promise that its life is completely forfeit to the Queen. On the death of a Queen, any surviving Esne plunge their own daggers into their hearts so that they may continue to serve the Queen in his personal heaven.

“And Esne are not only loyal to their own Queens, but to the Omadonna. Even those Esne in my personal service would happily leap in front of a blade for you or any other Omegá. It’s why the Queen’s Floor is so safe in any Pack Hall. The doors and entrances are guarded by First Alphas and the inner rooms are guarded by Esne. In your case, as in Joshua’s, you additionally will have a Queen’s Alpha to post either on your door or in your bed.”

“Yet, that begs a question, doesn’t it?” Dean challenged quietly. “If Queen’s Floors are so safe, why do they have secret back doors?”

“Being totally honest, I don’t know,” Daniel admitted. “But I don’t deny taking a certain amount of comfort from the idea. I imagine the practice dates back to more primal times when the Packs sometimes warred amongst themselves. But just from a practical point of view it’s nice to know we can just slip in and out of our apartments to talk to each other without all the pomp and ceremony of formal visits.”

“Late night pyjama parties?” Dean joked.

“Or wine-fuelled bitch fests whenever our Primáres piss us off.”

Dean smiled, but gestured at the Esne. “I’m bothered by them, Daniel.”

“What’s particularly telling, Dean, is that you are the first Free Beta-born Omegá in centuries to receive a full tything. Even Joshua only has four Esne and, until this morning, the Guild had only found two of them willing to offer themselves to your service. Though, admittedly, it is likely you would always have received at least a couple more once you were mated and established as a true ‘Queen’.”

“I’m really struggling with accepting the idea of them at all,” Dean admitted quietly. “After all the bullshit of my own muting and castration and all the horror expressed by the Packs over it happening and all the celebration about it being reversed, I’m now supposed to think these Esne are a ‘good thing’? It’s… it’s obscene, Daniel.”

“It’s their religion and their choice,” Daniel explained, equally quietly. “And the practices of most formalised religions are pretty obscene. For the Esne, becoming a Neuter is the closest they can achieve to emulating the androgynous hermaphroditic state of an Omegá. Their muting is done to demonstrate that they will be the most trustworthy of servants, though it’s a stupidly pointless exercise as you know yourself because communication is always possible one way or another. But the muting is a religious ritual that THEY believe is a holy duty to be performed. They pride themselves on being the ultimate servants. Silent, dedicated, trustworthy, willing to kill or die for their Queens without hesitation or doubt. They don’t care what task is demanded of them. They will just as happily clean a toilet as serve your dinner or jump in front of an assassin’s blade. Their service is not a job, Dean, it is a sacred, religious vocation for them.

“All I can promise you is that no one asks the Esne to do this to themselves. In fact, Pack Law is pretty much opposed to the idea because the muting and desexualisation is done when they are merely tiny pups and, in our opinion, none are capable of making such a life-changing decision at that age. But Pack Law does not dare actually ‘forbid’ it. The truth is simply that some Betas are born with a calling to join the Guild. No argument by their Parents or Peers or Primáres dissuades them from following the call of such service to the Omadonna. It becomes evident sometimes from when they are barely weaned that they desire nothing more than to make the sacrifice.

“In the past some individual parents attempted to forcibly prevent their pups from answering the call of their souls to become Esne. Those pups invariably self-mutilated or suicided. So it was ultimately decided that all the Packs could do was demand the Guild set arduous tests before allowing membership and, since many of the would be acolytes return to the Packs having failed to become ordained, we trust that our demands are being met. So the Esne are greatly respected, Dean, and their service is seen as an honour and sacrifice worthy of respect.”

Dean nodded his acceptance of Daniel’s point. Whilst he still couldn’t understand why someone would be drawn to voluntarily undergo such terrible mutilation, it wasn’t his place to disrespect their choice to do it. Besides, realistically, even his own muting had been more terrible because of the effect on his Flores than for the actual theft of his voice. And, since many Betas had virtually non-existent sex-drives perhaps the Esne were simply chosing a physical expression of an already present mental asexuality.

But on a different level he still had his doubts.

Because if the Packs offered so few opportunities for Betas to rise in the hierarchy and the position of Esne was seen as an honoured and respected role, wasn’t it possible that the Esne weren’t choosing their vocation from religious fervour but were simply accepting the body modification as the cost of self-advancement?

He decided it was yet another question to add to his growing list of moral dilemmas to be chewed on later.

But, in the meantime;

“Well, I guess that settles the question of whether to move into the apartment or not,” he said. “Your quarters are large, Daniel, but I’m not sure they can absorb another ten Esne without everyone tripping over themselves.”

“I’d make it work if I had to,” Daniel said, “but I’m rather relieved I won’t have to try. I’ll call Meg. She said she wanted to bring Crowley to you herself.”

“Perhaps she wants to discuss his care routine with you. Preferred kibbles. Number of walks a day. Favorite chew toy. All that jazz,” Joshua chuckled.

“He’s a respected adult Alpha, not a puppy dog,” Daniel chided.

“Don’t see the difference myself,” Joshua said, with a wink.

“How do I deal with the Esne?” Dean asked, as they waited for Meg and Crowley to arrive. “I don’t want them just kneeling there all day. How do I get them to do… well, whatever they are supposed to be doing?”

It was Morgana who took charge, snapping her fingers loudly. “The Domina graciously accepts your plea to join his household. Be of service.”

The Esne all rose to their feet and, except for two who moved to stand with their backs to the wall of the parlour in a posture of silent attention, they dissipated throughout the apartment disappearing to perform whatever self appointed tasks they chose.

“Do they have names?” Dean asked cautiously.

“You just address all of them as ‘Esne’,” Joshua replied airily. “They just float around interchangeably, doing their own thing. I’ve always been absolutely convinced they have a lot more understanding of what they should be doing than ‘I’ do, so I just leave them to do whatever they like. You quickly forget they are even in a room.”

Dean nodded. That’s what worried him. He’d found the same thing with Daniel’s Esne. The strange Betas seemed to pride themselves on being so efficiently unobtrusive that he did literally stop noticing them. But until he was absolutely certain that was what they ‘preferred’ rather than what they ‘expected’, Dean wasn’t going to allow the same situation to develop with his own Esne.

“What about you?” Dean asked, addressing the girls in the doorway directly. “Surely YOU have names.”

Three just giggled helplessly, two averting their eyes and hunching a little and the third starting to visibly shake with nerves.

Dean looked helplessly at the fourth Beta girl, a tall extremely attractive blonde who appeared around his own age.

She nodded in response, her confident posture and easy smile a welcome relief. “I’m Jessica,” she said, “and if it pleases the Domina, I am to be your Handmaiden. These silly creatures are Lisa, Ellie and Sally. They will perform the role of cleaning drudges. They are young but surprisingly competent at their jobs and they, like myself, fought hard for the honour of being gifted to your household. So please don’t take their nerves as evidence of any unhappiness.

“In fact, don’t be fooled, Domina, these three are definitely not the shrinking violets they are pretending to be. When they finally get over their awe at joining your household, you’ll discover they’re all noisy little gossips who witter-on all day about stuff and nonsense. You’ll find yourself wishing soon enough that they remained too scared to address you.”

Dean grinned at the girl, so relieved by the normality of their conversation he could have happily hugged her.

“And your role specifically is?” he asked cautiously.

“I will look after your clothes, aid you in dressing, carry messages, attend to your bathing and ensure you are attended correctly by your other staff,” she said. “Because your household has no Beta Wife to care for your needs, I will also fill that role to the best of my ability.”

“Thereby hoping you gain enough experience that you can later use your very pretty face to win the role for real, since attending the Domina in that way will undoubtedly bring you to the eyes of many Primáres?” Joshua interrupted slyly.

Jessica blushed and laughed. “Should the opportunity present itself in the future, My Queen, why not?”

“Why not indeed,” Morgana agreed, smiling approvingly at the pretty blonde teen. “In fact, with the Domina’s permission, I will take you back to my office and show you some pointers of how best to serve him.”

As Morgana left with Jessica, Dean heard her greet someone and assumed it was Meg and Crowley entering. Instead it was Mateo, surprisingly, since the little Queen had flounced off earlier with the comment he’d rather watch paint dry than go look at an unoccupied apartment.

“I just couldn’t resist,” he admitted. “I really wanted to be here to see you get your Alpha, Dean.”

“You mean interfere in him getting his Alpha,” Joshua corrected snidely.

“I am not having Dean accept any substandard candidate,” Mateo replied. “I have already spoken with Raphael and he has agreed Dean may have his choice of Confederacy Alphas instead. We do have over 30,000 of them, after all. Raphael says, if you want, he’ll get a short-list of likely candidates put together, with bios and photos, and you can pick whichever one you like the look of. I think he’s feeling you may have been inadvertently disrespected by his unfortunate comment regarding Azazel. He’s very keen to have the opportunity to redeem himself to you.”

“A Queen’s Alpha can’t just come from any mongrel background,” Joshua scoffed. “He has to be a First Alpha.”

“So?” Mateo shrugged. “Dean can pick whichever one he likes, regardless of his position in the Hierarchy. There’s a lot of very cute lower ranked Alphas and they’re an awful lot better at taking orders. So Dean just picks one he likes the look of, then Raphael will give him a damn good fucking. Voila, instant First Alpha.”

Daniel snorted softly. “Maybe you should consider Mick then,” he told Dean. “Because he can’t rejoin the Pack whilst drowned in Castiel’s pheromones and I’m not sure Ophriel’s knees are up to him fucking actual Grandé pheromones back out of an Alpha. Poor pup’s apparently been hosed down and locked up in a cell whilst Ophriel considers what to do with him.”

“Poor bastard,” Joshua agreed. “He took a face full of Grandé cum for you, Dean. That’s probably at least worth you checking his cock out for a good fit.”

“Mick’s the Alpha I walked over?” Dean asked cautiously.

“That’s the one. Young, Pretty. Clearly very stupid,” Joshua agreed. “It would have been perfectly sensible for him to go fetch an actual footstool to solve the problem but, no, he has to play hero with his own body. Probably fulfilled a personal fantasy though. Shame you weren’t wearing heels like Matty. I bet Mick would have come like a rocket.”

“He did anyway,” Daniel confirmed. “Apparently it wasn’t only Castiel’s ‘emissions’ that had to be cleaned up. Which is probably another reason Ophriel is determined to dispose of him. It would be totally disrespectful to me, for Ophriel to keep Mick as a First Alpha now Mick has been ‘corrupted’ by you.”

“But you’d be okay with ‘me’ having him?” Dean asked, totally confused.

Daniel shrugged. “Any Alpha would have been crazy not to react to your bare foot walking over his spine. I don’t have a problem with you ‘stealing’ his adoration, Dean. I’m just not willing to take him back again.”

“Daniel doesn’t accept sloppy seconds,” Joshua said, with a smirk. “And at least Mick is a full-sized Alpha. You really ought to consider it.”

“Maybe you should mind your own business, Joshie,” an unfamiliar female Beta announced as she stormed into the room, Crowley in tow.

Dean blinked as he recognised the small petite brunette as Megan Cainson.

“With your permission, Daniel, I was thinking straight swapsies would be fair,” Meg continued blithely. “Now Crowley here’s been relinquished by CP, I’ve got a position to fill.”

“You mean a hole to fill,” Joshua laughed.

Meg smirked unrepentantly. “I’d give that Mick a whirl,” she admitted. “Since CP has already accidentally claimed him anyway. Might as well get a ride or two out of him whilst we decide whether to keep him or not.”

“I don’t think a cum face pack constitutes a genuine claiming,” Mateo argued. “Castiel still has to do the deed properly before you take Mick for a spin.”

“Damn,” Meg snapped. “That’s looking increasingly bloody unlikely.” She turned her attention to Dean for the first time. “I don’t know what you’re doing to him, Dean, but PLEASE can you give it a rest? I think you’re going to break him and whilst I share your frustration with the fact he’s a bit of a dick sometimes, I do actually rather like him on the whole.”

He blinked at her innocently.

She narrowed her eyes in distrust.

He ignored her, looking eagerly at Crowley instead. “How’s Charlie?” he asked.

“I’ve left her busily buying colour co-ordinated school supplies,” Crowley assured him. “What happened to your voice?”

“I got it back,” Dean told him.

Crowley waved dismissively. “I know _that_ ,” he said. “I just wanted to know if you always sounded like you smoked thirty a day or if it’s a new development.”

“I’m sure he’s always sounded like he’s got bigger balls than you,” Meg smirked.

Dean shrugged his agreement. “What can I say?”

“Aaaand, that’s my que,” Mateo purred. “Drop ‘em, Cowbell, I want to see if you’re good enough for Dean.”

“It’s Crowley,” the Alpha spluttered, his cheeks pinking.

“It’s bottom of the consideration list, if you don’t stop talking and start stripping,” Mateo grinned.

“Look, this isn’t necessary,” Dean interrupted.

“Oh yes it is,” Joshua argued, with a smirk.

“Sounds fair enough to me,” Meg agreed. “Drop ‘em Crowley and show the Queens what you’ve got.”

“Daniel?” Dean urged. “Do something.”

Daniel shrugged.

“I would never dream of interfering,” he said. “And I don’t think Crowley would ever forgive me if I did.”

And, looking at the significant bulge in Crowley’s pants even as he argued and pled for mercy, Dean had the feeling Daniel might actually be right.

“What the hell,” he growled, shaking his head in exasperation. “Crowley? Do as you’re told.”

Crowley’s eyes rolled back in his head at the sound of Dean’s ‘command’.

“Oh for GOD’S SAKE,” Meg yelled, as the room filled with the stench of Alpha cum. “Don’t you think I’ve smelt more than enough of that already this afternoon?”


	99. Chapter Ninety Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, RL threw me a curve ball this weekend.
> 
> I've posted a longer part today as an apology for keeping you waiting.

"NO," Crowley stated, firmly. "My name is Crowley. It is not, and never will be, Siervos _anything_."

"Nobody's saying it would be your _name_ , Cowbell," Mateo soothed. "Siervos de la Domina is what Raphael says the Primáres are suggesting your new status might be officially called, unless or until Dean decides to accept a mate and is formalised as a Queen. And, at this stage, the only real 'might' about it is whether or not Dean accepts you for the role or accepts a better offer. If I were you, I'd concentrate on securing the position before arguing about the job title."

"Because, although you're surprisingly more attractive than I'd imagined you’d be with your pants off," Joshua interrupted, "Mick is still younger, prettier and considerably taller."

"But not necessarily bigger," Daniel pointed out, with a serene smile.

"I've already told you I want Mick for myself," Meg reminded the Queens, jutting her lower lip petulantly.

"Only if Dean permits," Daniel pointed out. "He may not have the rank of Queen but the formally stated desire of any Omegá outranks even that of a Grandé Beta Wife. If Dean decides he wants Mick, you’ll just have to take Crowley back home with you instead."

“Charming. I feel like an unwanted birthday present,” Crowley muttered under his breath. “Wouldn’t even be so bad if you hadn’t already unwrapped me.”

Everyone ignored him.

Meg's nose twitched with irritated acceptance of Daniel’s point. There was no denying that, in the hierarchy of Pack Land, Omegáres definitely all held the trump cards. She decided to drop the subject of Mick's suitability and instead support Crowley's application for the position, which should achieve the same result anyway. Well, unless it turned out Queens could have multiple Queen's Alphas.

She was starting to think the Queens (by which she definitely was referring most specifically to Chuck Sethson, neé Winchester) were now making the rules up as they went along.

"I agree it would be a little strange for Dean's Alpha to be called a 'Queen's Alpha' until he is formally a Queen, but I think perhaps the title for the position should possibly be mayordomo, rather than servios," she suggested.

"That makes me sound like a head waiter," Crowley griped, not appreciating the suggested 'promotion'.

"It translates more like a butler, really," Mateo replied. "Which is probably an appropriately respectable position to explain your inclusion in Dean's household. I like it. It would definitely remove any suggestion of impropriety."

Meg rolled her eyes impatiently. "I think the fact you've kept Crowley standing here naked for the last hour whilst we've been arguing the point has removed even the faintest idea of 'propriety' in any case."

"Nakedness doesn't always equate to sex, Megan," Daniel retorted repressively. "Though my own time as a guest at your Pack Hall does at least explain why you should _think_ that it does. I certainly witnessed enough naked Alphas revolving in and out of _your_ personal quarters and I highly doubt you were playing tea party with them."

"A girl has needs," Meg replied unapologetically.

"So do Omegáres," Joshua agreed enthusiastically. "But I prefer Jophiel's Alphas to wear as little as possible when they are with me just because I enjoy the sight of them that way, rather than to make them more immediately sexually accessible. It's not a case of me being too impatient to wait for them to strip. I just enjoy looking at them."

Daniel nodded his acceptance of the point. "Many Alphas are visually pleasing and it's perfectly socially acceptable to take aesthetic pleasure in their forms. Dean could theoretically have an entire personal household filled with naked Alphas and no one would suggest there was anything wrong with the idea. After all, it is not as though an Alpha can force his attentions upon an Omegá.

“Whether Dean prefers his staff skyclad or dressed in clown outfits is totally irrelevant. The only possible objection anyone could raise is if Dean chooses to do more than simply look at them and even those objections would necessarily be whispered behind his back, rather than to his face. After all, an Omegá can do no wrong. People would invariably gossip but they couldn’t actually criticise. My only personal concern would be that some Primáres might find it unacceptable and that would make them less likely to offer a mating bite."

"Well his ‘true mate’ certainly doesn’t seem to have any issues with the idea, so Dean has Castiel as a safety net. And gossip isn’t a valid reason not to do something," Joshua added. "Dean's absolutely right that it's no one else's business what he does with his own body. Jophiel certainly was no virgin when I mated him and I certainly never raised the issue with him over it. I'm beginning to think I should have, though. There’s definitely some kind of double standards going on. Considering the fact it's supposed to be Omegáres who are Most High, Dean's rapidly managing to convince me that we certainly don't seem to be accorded that status with any genuine honesty."

"It worries me more that you hadn't already figured the hypocrisy out for yourself," Mateo countered. "It's far worse here than in my Country, but even in Espaná the idea that Omegáres can do no wrong is rendered pretty irrelevant by the expectation that propriety will force us to only 'choose' to behave acceptably. What's the point of being legally allowed to do whatever we like, if we remain so constrained by societal pressures that we don't dare do anything except what is expected of us?"

"Part of that burden is a cost of our high status, rather than specifically due to our designation," Daniel said, thoughtfully. "It isn't unreasonable for the people who worship and serve us because of our status to expect a certain level of behaviour in return. It's the cost of being perceived as royalty. Even the Primáres are forced to conform to societal pressure in the same way."

"Well maybe that's the mistake you're all making," Dean suggested cautiously. "Maybe if all the people who actually enable the Pack to survive were given more status of their own, the Designations at the top of the puppy pile wouldn't be boxed into such rigid roles."

Dean didn't want to sound critical but, whilst he was definitely enjoying living in the Pack world far more than he'd expected to and genuinely liked the people he'd met there so far, the more he witnessed the disparities of status between the various designations living under Pack rule, not to mention his considerable disquiet regarding the peculiar Esne, the more sympathy he was feeling for the Free Betas. And that wasn't a comfortable feeling. He didn't want to feel any sympathy for the society that had abused him so badly but he couldn't wilfully blind himself to the reasons why he suspected the Betas had demanded emancipation in the first place.

Fortunately, the Queens didn't take offence at his suggestion. Quite the opposite. Daniel actually gave him a clearly approving look, like a teacher thrilled by a bright student.

"You're absolutely right," Daniel agreed, "but there's no workable solution, is there? That's exactly why the Beta War of Independence happened without any bloodshed. When so many Betas got together and protested the lack of parity, the other designations couldn't even find it in themselves to argue that the Betas were wrong. Their complaints had genuine merit. The Betas are the absolutely critical backbone of the Pack. Without Betas to provide the food and mine resources and perform the necessary day to day tasks that enable a civilisation to exist, we'd all still be living in caves as hunter/gatherers. It's not only Beta labour we depend on, though. Many Betas have a fierce and enviable intelligence. The brightest of them are our doctors and administrators and accountants and inventors. They are not just the builders but the architects.

"So I agree it’s pretty unfair that regardless of their personal achievements they are destined to always remain at the foot of our society but, really, what's the alternative? The emancipated American Betas envisaged a society with no Pack hierarchy at all, but that's impossible to achieve unilaterally. As long as there are any countries or even independent states with Alpha armies, no society purely containing Betas would be safe from attack and occupation.

“Coming from Beta Land, you probably have a perception of the Packs which is a little skewed and I don’t suppose the eviction of Sioux Falls has helped convince you that the Packs aren’t the wicked, oppressive landlords the Betas claim us to be. But what you need to realise is that the fief structure wasn't set up to oppress the Free Betas, Dean. It was set up that way to protect them from conquering armies. As long as the land remains Pack owned, the Betas can theoretically live entirely Pack Free and yet retain the protections of the Pack upon whose land they live on. They can almost choose to forget the other designations even exist, calling on us only when they require assistance. They effectively have their cake and eat it. Well, unless they act so appallingly that the Packs have to take action.”

Crowley nodded his agreement. “As a lawyer, I can confirm that the decision to evict may have been ostensibly done on religious grounds and prosecuted criminally in that way at the Conclave. But the underlying reason it was done was also a necessity to break a civil contract that the Pack no longer felt inclined to be bound to. The continuation of the fief would have forced the Pack to rise in defence of the City of Sioux Falls against external attack for the next 99 years. So, despite completely loathing the population and their practices, the Pack would have remained obliged to physically protect the population from external harm.”

“Oh,” Dean said, frowning thoughtfully. “That does put a different spin on things. But none of the issues that caused the eviction would have happened at all if the City didn’t have any resident Alphas or Omegáres. If the Betas handed over all Free born Alphas and Omegáres on presentation, none of the problems would exist," he pointed out. "I don't understand why the obligation to do so wasn't made an actual condition of the Declaration of Independence."

"Again, you're right,” Daniel agreed, “but it isn't that straightforward when dealing with human beings. No one was prepared to put in writing that a mother had to legally surrender her pup to the Packs. It was imagined, naively in retrospect, that the very maternal love that made such a clause unconscionable would automatically protect the pups affected. But the Betas soon grew to loathe those 'cuckoos' born into their nests and yet didn't want to give the Alphas up because by that time they had lost their memory of the Packs as benevolent protectors and saw them only as oppressive landlords. They decided to keep their Alpha sons and raise them into an indentured army.

"They imagined they could develop a society with Betas as supreme and Alphas as a sub class. It is telling, perhaps, that they were not satisfied simply to rise to an equal status themselves but instead, fearing their physical strength, sought immediately to use Beta cleverness to put a yoke of slavery over the usually less intellectually blessed Alphas. For all the Betas claimed their hatred of servitude, it turned out all they truly hated was their _own_ servitude. They were perfectly happy to impose it on someone else. And, of course, in the world they envisaged creating, there was no perceived need for Omegáres or Alpha Primáres at all. But, as you know yourself, without Primáres the young Alphas run rampant."

"So it's a catch-22," Crowley agreed. "The Betas want the power but don't have the physical strength to keep it. The Alphas have the strength to take control of the Free Beta society but most lack the mental facility to even want it, let alone make good use of it. The only way any world with two distinct different designations sitting at the top of the food chain together can exist without constant infighting is throwing another designation on top of them to enforce the peace. That's why the hierarchy exists, Dean. Not because any of us want to be told what to do but because the alternative is the anarchy of constant inter designation power plays between the Betas and the Alphas."

"I don't know about that," Mateo countered, licking his lower lip suggestively. "You definitely seem open to being told what to do."

Crowley flushed slightly and his cock, already flushed and rigid, bounced happily against his abdomen like a flag waving its owner's desire to willingly surrender.

"Sexual submission isn't the same thing," Crowley still protested vehemently.

"You disappoint me, Crowley. Out of every Alpha I've ever met, I would have thought you were the one man clever enough to understand that it's the root of _everything_ ," Daniel retorted firmly.

Dean's eyes widened with the shock of a sudden understanding.

There was an absolutely obvious reason the Alphas were all naturally sexually submissive. Joshua might be the only Omegá physically dragging an Alpha around by a cock leash but, effectively, the entire Pack Land world depended on its ability to metaphorically do the same to control all of its Alphas. The Alphas were the armies and the enforcers, the one designation with the physical power to simply run over the other designations like berserkers. But they had an inbuilt weakness, an inbuilt inescapable control mechanism. No matter how big or strong or clever or ambitious an Alpha might personally be, the only desire that truly drove them at a biological level was the wish to be dominated themselves (and perhaps do a little cheerful dominating of lower ranks in return).

But in Free Beta society there were none capable of sexually dominating an Alpha. Free born Alphas didn't have the opportunity to have that itch scratched. They probably didn't even know they had the itch. They would just remain constantly frustrated, moving from one unsatisfactory relationship to another, always wanting something 'other' but unable to even imagine what it might be that would satisfy them. Because only the Primáres and Omegáres had the ability to do it, and Free Born Omegáres had no idea they _could_ do it and Free born Primáres simply didn't exist.

Maybe that had been the root of his own sire's behaviour. John Winchester's lifestyle of constantly moving from job to job, from motel to motel, from bed to bed, had possibly been driven by some aching, addictive hunger for a 'fix' that he couldn't ever obtain because he had no idea what it was he was hungering for.

No wonder Crowley, despite all his wealth and power in the Beta World, had consented to 'bend over' for Cain when he'd finally entered Pack Land. One day, Dean would have to ask for the details of that encounter; ask Crowley at what precise moment the cocky, self-assured little Alpha had suddenly found himself unable to resist the urge to drop his pants and surrender not only his ass but his loyalty and even his personal fortune to the Primá and his Pack. Had it been a gradual build up of internal pressure or a lightning bolt of sudden understanding?

Either way, it didn't seem that Crowley had ever regretted the choice.

Clever, proud Crowley, for all his vocal protests, had been quivering with excitement rather than humiliation for the last hour. Even his usual sarcastic wit had been largely absent because every time he'd attempted to argue with the Queens, his turgid, swollen cock had slapped against his stomach and wept joyful tears of pre-cum in a steady, dripping show of complete submission. It had been pretty pointless for his mouth to keep spouting arguments when his cock was visibly waving a surrender flag that completely negated his words.

Whilst a Beta, bullied into taking his clothes off in a room full of people, would probably have stood there dying of humiliation, the only thing Crowley looked likely of expiring from was a happy heart attack when all the pressure building in his groin was finally allowed another release. Whatever he was saying about being displayed like an 'animal on an auction block', Crowley was quite obviously thrilled to be the centre of attention for so many Omegáres and despite his flushed cheeks and verbal protestations, he wriggled like an eager puppy whenever the conversation returned to direct discussion of his physical attributes and his cock would spring back to a full salute.

And whilst Dean could had been forgiven for finding a correlation between Crowley's body betraying him and his own experiences with the manipulation of his own Flores, the truth was clear that the situations were poles apart. Nothing was physically making Crowley stay in that room. And no possible consequences could occur from him just dressing and walking out other than him losing the ability to become Dean’s chosen Alpha. He was perfectly welcome to return to Detroit and resume his role as Castiel’s First Alpha.

So Crowley was deliberately _choosing_ to stay.

And that meant it didn't matter what Crowley's mouth was saying, his cock was acting as the ultimate lie detector.

Which, come to think of it, was probably the whole reason the Queens had demanded Crowley stripped. It was just more smoke and mirrors. It had nothing to do with 'checking his suitability' or measuring him for his potential 'fit'. What the Queens had truly intended, and achieved, was to enforce Crowley's honesty. It brought a new meaning to the idea of laying the truth bare.

This wasn't abuse of Crowley (though his eagerly bobbing dick was begging to differ) it was simply a flexing of the Queens' power to achieve a desired and necessary end of knowing whether Crowley could genuinely be trusted with Dean’s safety.

"Sex isn't an abuse of power here. It's the actual _basis_ of the power," Dean said, with the confidence of complete conviction. "And that's why the Betas are so screwed up in the Free Beta world. They learned government from the Packs. So, naturally, they're attempting to mirror that governance in creating their own society. They tried to duplicate the Pack structure within their own government, using the same tools, only the Betas, as a rule, don't really 'get' sex. So they are like the blind leading the blind."

"I knew I was going to like you," Meg grinned, offering a slow hand clap. "You're one weird puppy, Dean. It's like the Omadonna couldn't decide which designation you should be and just threw his hands in the air and made you as an amalgamation of all of them. You're as bossy as a Primá, as big as an Alpha and as bright as a Beta and yet, somehow, still all Omegá."

"It's funny you should say that, Meg," Daniel said, thoughtfully. "Because I have similar feelings about you and Crowley. You yourself are a Beta with the sexual appetite of an Omegá. Crowley is an Alpha with the intelligence of a Beta. All three of you, in that respect, are peculiar mongrels. I find myself doubting that it's a coincidence you've been brought together. Especially with the way the Omadonna acted this morning. It feels increasingly that there’s divine influence everywhere."

"There's a lot of oddness going around these days," Joshua pointed out. "Chuck is more Beta than any Beta. He's like a whole new designation unto himself. A Betegá, maybe," he laughed.

"But am I right in assuming a naked Alpha is considered a more trustworthy one by the Queens simply because it's impossible for them to hide whether or not they are truly submitting?" Dean asked.

"Absolutely," Daniel agreed approvingly. "Because a Queen doesn't have the ability to produce compulsion pheromones like a Primá, he can't enforce obedience the same way. A Primá uses sex to dose a First Alpha with pheromones that literally compel obedience. To be honest, a Primá can temporarily impose that compulsion on anyone, _except for an Omegá_ , at will but for the effect to be lasting, it needs to be done via actual penetration. An Omegá's power, on the other hand, lies purely in the sexual appeal of his own body and the way he wields that appeal to ensnare an Alpha into wanting to serve him.

"On the surface, that makes us look less powerful than Primáres. But, if you think about it, Primáres have to take that which Omegáres are willingly given. So you have to ask yourself whether true power lives in the ability to steal or whether it lies in one who has no need to steal at all," Daniel said.

"Is that the real reason why you keep Randolph naked all the time, Joshua?" Mateo asked with sudden interest. “To be sure he’s submitting?”

"Don’t be ridiculous. Randy is completely bewitched by me. I don’t need to keep checking to make certain he’s remaining that way. But despite you enjoying the thought of me just being a wanton slut dragging Randy around naked except for his weapons harness simply because it gives me better access for seating myself, it actually just saves him time getting dressed and undressed numerous times a day. Since Queen's Alphas are forbidden to wear clothes inside the Apartments of their Queens, it would be intensely boring if I had to give him a five minute warning every time I wanted to step out of the door."

"Hold on," Crowley spluttered. "You never told me that, Meg!"

"I didn't know, but I don't see the problem. It's not like you've ever worn anything for more than five minutes when visiting me in Castiel's quarters. But it also explains why the Queens are making you stand there for so long. There's a difference between enjoying a piece of art and actually purchasing it to stick on your living room wall."

"Exactly," Joshua agreed. "If Dean is going to be looking at that cock all day, every day, he's got to be damned sure it's aesthetically pleasing to him."

Daniel glared at him repressively. "Actually, the real reason is to see whether he can remain at 'attention' for long periods of time. It would be quite disrespectful for a Queen's Alpha to ever appear unmoved by his Queen's beauty."

Meg nodded her understanding, "So the interview process is about how long he can keep an erection?"

"Well, obviously, we're having to make allowances for the fact he started the process so... explosively... so the fact he keeps dropping to half-mast won't be held against him," Joshua replied blithely. "And, of course, it's to his benefit anyway, what with him being a grower. Wouldn't exactly be seen to his best advantage otherwise."

Dean rolled his eyes impatiently. "Don't take this personally," he told Crowley. "They talk about me like this too, all of the time. I might as well not be in the room for all the care they give over my feelings over being discussed like a sex object." However, he then turned his attention to Joshua. "Who exactly is doing the 'forbidding' of Alphas wearing clothes in the Queen's apartments?"

Joshua looked taken aback for a moment, then shrugged. "Chuck said that's what it said in the parchment he uncovered. I don't read ancient Inglais, so I didn't read it myself."

"You barely read _modern_ Inglais," Meg pointed out snidely, "but, actually, to the best of my knowledge hardly anyone in America can translate the ancient texts and I find it's very suspiciously convenient that he found a parchment that probably no one in the Packs except Chuck himself can read and it just so happens to say _exactly_ what it suits him for it to say."

"You aren't possibly suggesting that Chuck made it up?" Daniel asked, though his eyes were bright with humour.

"Well I don't care whether he did or not," Dean decided firmly. "I'm going to go with the one fact absolutely no one can apparently argue with; that an Omegá can do no wrong. So I'm using that and making a stand. I refuse to do to an Alpha what the Betas did to me. I was horrified to be forced to appear in public naked. It wasn’t a religious ritual like the Conclave this morning. I wasn’t wearing my nakedness with pride, knowing I was being looked on with awe. In Beta Land it was just an objectification of my body and it made me feel like nothing more than a ‘thing’ to be mocked and abused. Turnabout isn't fair play. It's just petty payback. So in MY household, an Alpha will be allowed to wear whatever the hell he wants. The whole point of me having an Alpha is that he's supposed to protect me, right?"

"That's correct," Daniel confirmed.

"Then why the heck would I choose an Alpha I didn't trust to do the job?" Dean demanded. "If Crowley has to walk around with his dick on show all day just so I can feel certain he's not planning to stab me in the back, I'd rather not have him anywhere near me at all. It all comes down to trust, doesn't it? I just have to ask myself whether I trust Crowley and, if I do, then that's all there is to it. So put your pants back on, Crowley. Interview's over. You've got the job."

"Ah, one thing," Meg said, biting her lower lip. "You need to remember that Crowley was Castiel's First Alpha and the process of dismissing him from service just flooded him with a fresh new dose of pheromones. His whole body is absolutely radiating Castiel's signature and will be for some time. Mick’s also going to be affected to a lesser extent. I'm kind of kicking myself for saying this, and, although he was keen for me to give you the warning, I know Castiel probably won’t forgive me for suggesting this; but you might actually be safer to choose to have one of Raphael's Alphas instead. Raphael’s pheromones aren’t going to have any effect on you but we’re all pretty damned certain Castiel’s will.”

Dean looked at her thoughtfully, then offered her a wide genuine smile. "Thank you," he told her sincerely. "I really appreciate the warning."

"Have I been fired already, squirrel?" Crowley griped, glaring at Meg. He would obviously have warned Dean himself of the danger but, preferably, after securing his position for more than five minutes.

"We'll just be cautious," Dean replied easily. Although he hadn’t removed the packing from his nose, the numbing effect of the lidocaine had been steadily wearing off but he still felt fully and completely in control of his Flores. He was beginning to suspect that he had a _lot_ more control over his attraction than Castiel did.

Which was unexpected but obviously not unwelcome.

"You could always Saran Wrap his dick," Joshua suggested, with a grin.

"I'll take that under advisement if the situation arises," Dean agreed equably. "But even though I ‘could’ do it, I'm not sure taking a bounce on my 'Butler' would be in good taste."

"I'm not your damned butler," Crowley grumbled.

Dean blinked at him innocently. "I only have a veto over the candidate, not the job title. If it were in my purview to name stuff, I wouldn't have ten Esne with something as stupid as 'Domina' tattooed onto their skin. That one was down to Mateo and if I can't save _myself_ from his imaginative job descriptions, I sure as hell am not going to fight for _you_ to get a better title than I got saddled with."

It suddenly occurred to him that it had been almost two hours since he’d last ‘tweaked’ Castiel. He was sure ignoring your Primá was some kind of offence. Just to be on the safe side, lest anyone accuse him of ‘neglect’, he flexed his Flores slightly and was rewarded by a distant roar. Interesting. Even from several apartments further away down the corridor of the Queen’s floor, there hadn’t been any significant time delay to the Primá receiving his scent. Maybe he should take a stroll in the Pack Hall gardens and see if the effect worked over that kind of distance too.

He wasn’t quite sure why it was so important to him to know he had so much effect on the Primá. It was undoubtedly satisfying though, so he decided to park the examination of his motives for another time and simply enjoy the moment whilst it lasted.

“Oh, God,” Meg muttered. “There he goes again.” She looked suspiciously at Dean.

He returned her stare with studied innocence.

"Well, that was an hour of my life I'll never get back," Mateo sighed rudely, as Crowley began to dress himself. "If the show's over, I've got a Primá to sort out. There are a peculiar amount of Omegá scents wafting around this building and it's making him quite horny. Plus he's still in a state of shock over your knife-throwing, Dean. I have a definite feeling Raphael might be up for a bit of role playing tonight with me starring as a mini-domina myself." He grinned wickedly. "I always suspected my ceremonial knife might come in useful some day."

"Are we going to meet up for a divvy of the spoils tomorrow morning?" Joshua asked eagerly.

"What spoils?" Dean demanded suspiciously.

"Lions and tigers and bears, oh my," Joshua laughed. "I want at least a puppy and maybe a couple of cats to take home with me."

"I already claimed any snakes," Mateo pointed out. “But I’ll take anything cool like lizards and spiders and stuff too.”

“A pet is for life, not just for scaring your Pack Hall,” Meg said, with a repressive sniff.

“I can’t see why they can’t be dual purpose,” Mateo countered. “It’s not like I’m ever magically going to have a personality transplant and decide to replace them with fluffy bunnies, is it?”

Daniel shook his head wearily at the bickering. "You're all welcome to take anything you want. In a city that size, even if only 1% left their pets behind, there are going to be far more rescues than I can find homes for. What about you, Dean? Any particular requests?"

"I'm allergic to cats and I don't like dogs," Dean said. "I was determined to save their lives but I’m pretty sure I don't actually want to live with any of them."

"You'll change your mind when you see their little sad faces," Joshua assured him. "We're Omegáres. We're biologically incapable of resisting cute, cuddly, needful, big-eyed helpless things like puppies and kittens.”

"Well, as Meg said, I'm not a typical Omegá. I absolutely guarantee nothing cute, cuddly and needful is going to end up living in my apartment. Besides, if I want big-eyed and helpless, I have Crowley."

"Very funny," Crowley grumbled, half-heartedly, as he performed the unpleasant experience of putting his cold, wet, sticky pants back on.

"Do me a favour, Dean. Cut out the 'thing' for a couple of hours at least. Castiel needs some sleep if he's going to be of any use to Ophriel tomorrow," Meg asked.

"I can't help it if my Flores finds him so irresistible that it's sending out invisible smoke signals to him," Dean replied sweetly.

"Yeah, right," she said sceptically. "You're sitting there cool as a cucumber but I'm supposed to believe your body is so wild with lust you simply can’t help yourself?"

"Of course I can’t," he said, dryly. "He's my ‘true mate’. I'm completely overcome with need." He used his right hand to fan his face affectedly.

Meg looked torn between annoyance and humour for a moment, then laughter won.

“Poor CP really doesn’t have any idea of what he’s letting himself into with you.”

“Well, if we’re really ‘true mates’, you have to assume that I’m exactly the Omegá he deserves,” Dean replied unapologetically.

And, after a moment’s consideration, Meg smirked her agreement.


	100. Chapter Ninety Five

Dean was feeling pretty pissed, though he wasn’t exactly sure why.

It ought to have been a relief to hear that Castiel had apparently flown directly back to Detroit instead of returning to Pierre after the razing of Sioux Falls.

It certainly removed all pressure of any immediate decision off Dean’s shoulders.

Apparently (according to common rumour, that only he’d overheard being discussed between Lisa and Sally, because no one had actually bothered to tell him the reason personally) the Primá had decided Dean was far too young to mate and should have a year or two of ‘finding his feet’ in Pack Land before being put in the position of being formally offered a mating bite.

On the surface, it was a good idea and one that Dean appreciated in many ways. He had, inarguably, been feeling horribly pressured by the idea of arriving in Pierre only to be immediately presented with his apparent ‘True Mate’. The fact that said True Mate had been the subject of many of his pubescent fantasies hadn’t helped the situation. It would possibly have been too easy to let himself get swept off his feet by his fantasy of Castiel instead of learning about the man himself before making a decision.

Of course, since his personal experiences so far of Castiel were not exactly ringing endorsements it was equally possible the Primá was simply ‘running away’ again.

Which was possibly why Dean was feeling more pissed than relieved.

He was also pretty bored now he no longer had the amusement of ‘tweaking’ the Primá to occupy him.

Mateo was apparently busy ‘playing’ with his new acquisitions from Sioux Falls. Joshua was spending time either with his pups or his new puppy (or both). Daniel was off doing whatever Daniel did when he wasn’t entertaining an Omegá houseguest and Meg, although apparently still in Pierre, was busy doing ‘something’.

Crowley was off lurking in his room, apparently doing lawyerish things, after having disappeared for several hours altogether early that morning.

The cleaning drudges, although now brave enough to be incessantly chattering amongst themselves, scurried away like frightened mice if Dean so much as approached them directly. Jessica was off with Morgana, learning more about how to run a ‘royal’ Pack household and the Esne… well, they weren’t exactly conversationalists.

Although he’d seen Daniel ‘speak’ to one of the Esne with his hands, Dean had absolutely no idea how the sign language worked and when he’d asked one of the Betas whether they could write, the Esne had just stared at him blankly. He hadn’t even shrugged. He’d just stood there like a statue, unblinking, as if Dean didn’t even exist. Dean still didn’t know whether that was a ‘no’, an indication the Esne hadn’t understood the question or even an indication the Esne had no interest in conversing with him whatsoever.

It had been, frankly, a bit intimidating. For all his appearance and attitude of self-confidence, Dean was just a seventeen year old pup thrown into an alien world. He had too fiery a temper not to bite immediately against any show of aggression or disrespect. Against apparent calm indifference, however, he found himself flailing and retreating to lick his wounds.

And mutter about Castiel.

Which wasn’t even particularly satisfying without an audience. Dean didn’t have a cell phone, he’d left his tablet abandoned somewhere in the Main Hall after his miraculous ‘recovery’ and he couldn’t find a land line anywhere in the apartment.

He didn’t have any way to contact the Queens without Jessica to act as his messenger or Crowley to act as his bodyguard, since the couple of times he’d stepped experimentally towards the front door by himself, Esne had flowed seemingly out of the woodwork into his path to stare at him with blank expressions that still somehow managed to express complete, forbidding disapproval. Dean was pretty sure they wouldn’t actually physically prevent him leaving but it seemed a bit disrespectful to ignore what seemed to be their clear censure of his unseemly behaviour.

So, there was nothing for it. He was going to have to go interrupt Crowley and either borrow his phone or his company for at least long enough to escape the apartment to ‘somewhere’. Though he had no idea to where.

What the heck did an Omegá do all day, every day, anyway?

Consequently, he was feeling a bit pissed and bored and maybe a bit sorry for himself as he approached Crowley’s closed door, which was probably why he stiffened as he heard the unmistakeable sound of the Alpha talking to someone inside the room. It could have been a telephone conversation, except for Dean distinctly hearing Crowley telling someone to get off his lap.

So he possibly banged the door a bit louder than necessary and was rewarded with the sound of some panicked movement inside Crowley’s room (and a distinctly heard instruction to someone to ‘keep quiet’) before the Alpha appeared, looking flustered and out of breath.

“Squirrel,” Crowley said, holding the door open just enough to reveal his face. “What can I do for you?”

“Aren’t you going to invite me in?” Dean asked sweetly.

Crowley flushed slightly. “Umm… I’m working,” he said. “Can you give me a few minutes and I’ll join you in the parlour?”

Dean made a show of thinking about it, then shook his head. “I’d really prefer the privacy of your room, Crowley. Less Esne listening in, you know?”

“It’s… um… not convenient,” Crowley mumbled.

Dean decided to cut to the chase. "Who are you hiding in your room?" he demanded suspiciously.

Crowley shuffled nervously in the doorway. "What on earth do you mean?"

"Who's in there? I heard you talking to someone."

“I was on the phone.”

“You told them to keep quiet,” Dean pointed out. "So that's not someone on the other end of a phone."

"Don't be ridiculous," Crowley scoffed. "As if I could sneak anyone past your Esne, even if I were so inclined."

"Then let me in," Dean challenged.

"Oh, I see. When you said this was my room, you only meant the place I am to sleep but otherwise it's a public highway. Excuse me for imagining I was going to have any actual privacy..."

"Cut the crap, Crowley. Either tell me who you're hiding in there or let me in and show me I'm mistaken. I heard you talking to them."

"To whom?"

"To whoever was sitting on your lap.”

Crowley deflated. "Oh, you heard that."

"Yes. So who is she and what is she doing in my apartment?"

"Look, I knew you'd be mad," Crowley admitted, "but I just couldn't resist her."

Dean rolled his eyes. "I don't care who you bed, Crowley. I just don't want you doing it here."

Crowley laughed nervously. "Juliet isn't quite...um... that kind of girl."

Dean frowned in confusion.

Crowley sighed in defeat, stepped back and let the door swing wide. "Meet Juliet."

"Fuck me," Dean said, blinking in astonishment. "She's huge."

"Some kind of wolfhound, maybe," Crowley said. "Though there's definitely some Rottweiler in there too."

"I don't like dogs, Crowley."

"I know. But she's very good and very quiet. I promise you won't even know she's here."

"Oh, I'll know," Dean said sceptically. "I don't think I could possibly forget I was living with something that size with that many teeth. I assume she came from Sioux Falls?"

“She’d been abandoned, Dean. Left chained in someone’s yard so she couldn’t even have escaped if she’d tried. She would have just burned to death if you hadn’t sent Raphael’s Alphas to double check the buildings. Fuckers just left her there like garbage,” Crowley growled.

Dean sniffed quietly, looking at the dog who, whilst terrifyingly large, had huge doleful, trusting brown eyes. He could just picture her sitting patiently and quietly, waiting trustingly for her master to return for her, completely unaware the bastard had left her to die.

“So, um, no-one else wanted her?” he asked.

Crowley dipped his head sheepishly, clearly having lost the will or ability to lie about the situation any longer. “I, well, possibly didn’t give everyone the opportunity but it wasn’t looking likely. All the puppies and kittens and lapdogs went yesterday, almost as soon as they arrived. Juliet was still in the kennels this morning with all the other less…cute… adoptees. And I, well she looked at me, Dean, and she wagged her tail and she got all excited and, well, when I started to walk out the room she gave this little helpless whimper and just sat down and curled up in a miserable ball and…I… well, I…”

“You’re a soft, stupid pushover, Crowley. Who’d have thought it. She sucked you right in with her big doleful eyes,” Dean chuckled.

“So I can keep her?” Crowley asked hopefully.

“As long as she sits on your lap, rather than mine, we’ll be fine,” Dean agreed, with a defeated sigh. “But you owe me.”

“Deals are my speciality,” Crowley agreed. “What do you want, Squirrel?”

“Find me someone who ‘speaks’ Esne. I want to learn how to do their sign language. Oh, and I want a phone, please. I’m going nuts here without anyone to talk to. And, lastly, I want to talk to Meg. Any idea where she is?”

“Meg and Daniel were waiting for a Vet to arrive when I was down at the Pack kennels. There’s a bit of a problem with one of the rescues,” Crowley said, his expression sad.

“What problem?”

“Ahh, nothing fixable, I’m afraid. The local vet is unfamiliar with the species so Daniel wanted a second opinion but it doesn’t look hopeful.”

“What species?”

“The Mountain Lion. I’m sure you heard they found one in a basement.”

Dean nodded.

“Well, it’s a skinny, old bag of bones with no teeth. Daniel called for the Pack vet to look at it because it’s got suppurating sores around its neck. It’s been chained up long enough that its collar is literally embedded into its skin. I guess it was smaller when the collar was first fitted. But the vet said its pointless doing an operation to remove the collar because the puma’s malnutrition is going to be nigh on impossible to fix because it has no teeth to eat with anyway. Daniel was pretty heartbroken about it and wanted another opinion to be sure, but I can’t see a second vet making a different judgement. Besides, what could be done with it anyway? It can’t be put back in the wild where it belongs and fixing it up just to put it in a cage seems pretty cruel and pointless.”

“I want to see it,” Dean said.

“Probably better you don’t,” Crowley advised. “It will just upset you as much as Daniel and Meg and, besides, if your allergy is to dander rather than saliva, you’re as likely to get a reaction from it as you are from a domestic cat.”

“I don’t care,” Dean said. “I really need to see it, Crowley. I feel responsible for it.”

“How the heck are you responsible, Squirrel? It was clearly held captive and badly neglected for years. At the very least you’ve saved it from a terrible death so it can be put down with kindness.”

"I'm not saying it's my fault it got hurt, but it's my responsibility now.  At the very least, it's my responsibility people like Daniel and Meg are upset now. I can't just pretend the situation has nothing to do with me at all."

Crowley sighed. "You might be a comfort to Daniel," he agreed. "He was quite distressed when I left him but that was over an hour ago. The deed's probably done."

"Then the sooner we go see Daniel the better," Dean said.

And sighing, Crowley quietly whispered to Juliet that Papa would be back soon and followed Dean to the front door.

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that, Dean promised, with a grin.

Crowley glared. "Since when did Omegáres get hearing superpowers, anyway?"

"Don't blame my Omegá for that. That's a hunter trait."

So they spent most of the walk to the Pack kennels discussing Bounty Hunting and the various tricks of the trade Dean had learned from his sire before his presentation had removed any possibility of him following in John Winchester's footsteps.

When they reached the kennel it was quickly obvious that although the second vet had arrived, the deed had most definitely not yet been done because the two vets were having a furious argument with each other, oblivious even to Daniel and Meg's presence let alone the arrival of Dean and Crowley.

"...obviously too old for anaesthetic," the speaker was a Beta grizzled with age, and though he was clearly furious he kept his voice moderated to respect the animals around him.

"Nonsense. I agree there's a severe risk due to its poor condition but it's nothing to do with its age. It's barely full grown. It's four or five at the most," the other, younger, Vet argued, also in a sotto voice.

"I don't care how poor it's diet was. It can't have lost its teeth at such a young age and there's no evidence of damage."

"Enough of its incisors are still reasonably intact. It's only critical loss are its fangs and most of its molars. Which, admittedly, make it look toothless, but even they're only needed to tear meat off in chunks that it then slices with its other teeth. As long as it's fed meat precut into sufficiently small chunks, it could theoretically still recover. Pumas don't chew food so they don't need a full set of teeth. What they need is a purely carnivorous diet and that is clearly not what the poor creature has been having."

Daniel interrupted the bickering vets. "But if it isn't old, and I know you're more familiar with exotic animals, Dr Vaughn, so you're likely to be right, how did it lose its fangs?"

"In my opinion they were surgically removed," the younger Beta said. "Dr Heitler is right there's no sign of tooth breakage. But, equally, there's no major gum disease either to explain it. I'm no big cat expert but I'd stake my whole reputation on the fact those four fangs were removed on purpose."

Dr Heitler interrupted then. "I'm not qualified to argue with your expert opinion, Dr Vaughn, so I accept you're probably right, but it makes no difference really does it? Even if the poor beast survives the operation to remove the collar and manages somehow to regain condition, despite my suspicion of actual organ damage due to the severe starvation, it's been captive since it was a pup. It can't survive in the wild, no Beta Zoo will want a toothless, mutilated cat on display and it's bit too sodding big to keep as a house pet."

Vaughn sighed his agreement. "It would be a lot of time and money spent to no real purpose, I suppose. I just can't bear the idea that an animal that could possibly be saved won't be just because its inconveniently large and of no value to anyone."

"It's not much bigger than Juliet," Dean pointed out thoughtfully to Crowley.

Crowley groaned. "You can't be serious, Squirrel."

"Deadly," Dean replied. And maybe it had been that one word 'mutilated' that did it, but suddenly Dean was absolutely determined that Juliet wasn't going to be the only four-legged addition to his household that day.

But it wasn't enough just to 'save' the cat. He knew, all too personally, that living as a mutilated object of pity was no life for anyone or anything.

"Are teeth 'bones'? he asked the entire room.

It was Daniel who answered, his expression sad, as he understood what Dean was asking. "Teeth don't have any regenerative cells. I know any bone has a small amount, allowing it to knit together after a break. Teeth, though, definitely can't be regenerated at all. Even the Omadonna himself can't perform a miracle like that."

"Well, I guess if the Goddess can't perform this miracle, we'll have to go with good old fashioned ingenuity instead." Dean turned to Dr Vaughn. "Can cats have dental implants?"

The Beta looked shocked, then thoughtful.  "I've read about Big Cats having dental surgery. I'm certain I saw an article once where a puma had titanium replacement fangs. It's not uncommon for them to lose one or two so some specialist vets have the ability to do implants.I imagine it costs an arm and a leg, though."

"But it could be done?"

"By one of those specialists, yes."

"So Buddy can have his mutilated fangs replaced."

"Oh god," Crowley muttered. "He's named the cat. It's got a name. That's game over."

"Well, as I said to Dr Heitler, he doesn't really 'need' them," Dr Vaughn said.

Dean shook his head repressively. "Trust me," he said. "He _needs_ them."

"Oh," Daniel sighed, his eyes dark with pain as he understood the reason for Dean's insistence the big cat needed to have its stolen fangs replaced.

"We're probably talking tens of thousands," Dr Vaughn pointed out.

Dean looked at Meg.  "Have you got one of those black credit cards like Crowley?"

She grinned. "Well, I _do_ have authorisation to buy you suitable Hope gifts in Castiel's absence. I don't think he was envisaging me buying a set of cat dentures though."

"Well, if doesn't approve, he can come here and tell me to my face," Dean countered.

Then he sneezed.

Crowley's eyes brightened. "Looks like your allergy is to cat dander after all," he suggested. "That's a shame. I was really looking forward to living with 'Buddy'," he lied.

It was Dr Vaughn, the traitor, who blithely said, "Oh, even the worst cat allergy is barely triggered by a big cat.  The odd sneeze or snuffle, maybe, and there's always anti-histamine tablets."

Dean smirked. "Well, I'd hate to disappoint Crowley.  Do the operation to remove Buddy's collar and then let's find a Cat dentist."

 


	101. Chapter Ninety Six

“What are you looking at?” Meg asked, as her husband grunted with irritation and frowned thoughtfully at the screen of his computer monitor.

“Potential bankruptcy,” he grumbled. “Do you have any idea how much aviation fuel costs these days?”

Meg snickered. “You're loaded, CP. I actually think you own the refinery that makes the fuel. You're just buying it off _yourself_ so it isn't really costing you anything. Anyway, even if that wasn't the case, if it bothered you that much running a private jet, you wouldn’t have one.”

"I don’t have a _private_ one,” he countered. “Last month I had to take a Charter Flight to New York because, at precisely the time I needed it,  _someone_   _else_ was using my jet," he reminded her snippily.

Meg tossed her head impatiently. “It was an emergency. Dean's cat needed a specialist vet flying up from Brazil and I didn't think you'd want _Dean_ to owe Lucifer a favour."

"I wouldn't have trusted Lucifer not to tag along with the Vet if called on for help," Castiel agreed. "And I definitely wouldn't put it past him to kick his latest Bride aside in favour of Dean once he gets a look at him. The reality definitely isn't what rumour suggests, is it?"

"You can't possibly think Dean would be interested in Lucifer."

"Why wouldn't he be? My Uncle Lucifer's suave and good looking and charming. He's one of the most powerful Grandés in the world. And, lest you've forgotten, he has _Sam Winchester_ in his Pack. That's got to be one hell of a trump card."

"But you're Dean's destined truemate and he knows it. That's got to be the biggest trump card of all," she reassured him. "After taking a sniff of _you_ , Lucifer's going to smell like a musty sour apple in comparison."

"I'm not sure he ever did," Castiel replied. "Scent me, I mean.  I know he had his sinuses numbed all the time I was there. Otherwise he'd have been at my door the moment I reacted to him."

"Says the man who spent 24 hours cumming like a freight train himself," she mocked.

"Yes," he agreed, with a flush. "But you'll note I stayed in my guest apartment and well away from him despite the inarguable allure. Omegáres don't have the same kind of self-control over things like that."

"And he's at the goal and he aims, and he shoots, and he misses by a mile," Meg sighed, rolling her eyes in irritation.

"What?"

"It's like a game of snakes and ladders. Every time I think you've finally climbed out of your misogynistic pit, you open your mouth and slide right back down to the bottom again. So it serves you right."

"What does?"

"That plane you just refuelled for your trip to Canada? Forget it. Dean needs it tomorrow. He's going to visit Mateo in Philadelphia. Sarah called me earlier but I told her she'd have to send Raphael's plane to collect him and, since it's in China at the moment, Dean was going to have to wait for a few days. But I've just changed my mind, Dean can use _your_ jet and you can fly commercial or hitch-hike for all I care."

Castiel's face darkened and he glowered at her forbiddingly, but it wasn't the _stolen_ plane that was the forefront of his irritation. "Don't be ridiculous. Dean can't travel to Philadelphia. He's an unmated Omegá. He can't just hop on a plane and fly to the Confederacy to have a tea party with Mateo."

Meg shrugged carelessly. "Crowley's filed the paperwork with the Free Beta authorities to ostensibly become his legal Alpha Guardian. He has no familial connection, so I agree it shouldn't have been possible, but Crowley's a damned clever lawyer and by the time he'd finished with them, the Betas were too cowed to fight back any more and just rolled over to get rid of him. So Crowley got guardianship and, as long as he travels with him, Dean can now go wherever he likes," she told him with considerable satisfaction.  "In fact, Dean could even fly commercial himself but I didn't think you'd like the idea and, besides, he doesn't want to put his cat in the hold."

Castiel shook his head wearily. "This is the cat wearing the $80,000 Dior collar, I assume."

"His name's Buddy," Meg advised sweetly.

"The cat that needed nearly $50,000 of veterinarian dental fees," Castiel continued grumpily. "Doesn't Dean understand that kittens are given away for free? Why out of all the animals rescued from Sioux Falls did he have to pick one that sickly? I could have funded a whole damned Cat Sanctuary for less than he spent on that damned thing. How many teeth does a cat have, anyway?"

"It's a Big Cat," she pointed out.

"I assumed as much from the amount of Lapis Lazuli needed for its collar. What on earth is it? A Maine Coon?"

Meg chuckled internally at his misunderstanding of what she'd meant by 'Big Cat'.

"Yeah, something like that," she said, and grinned.

~

 

“I think I officially hate you,” Mateo announced in greeting, as Dean entered the main hall of the Philadelphia Pack Hall, with Crowley and four of his Esne trailing behind him.

It was undoubtedly the fact that Dean had Buddy walking on his right and Juliet on his left that was the source of the little Omegá Queen’s jealous ire.

“But there’s something wrong with the picture,” Mateo stated, then he frowned in thought before snapping his fingers excitedly.  “You need matching collars,” he said.  “The hound should be wearing Dior too.”

“Juliet isn’t mine,” Dean replied, with a smile. “She might like walking next to me, but she’s definitely Crowley’s girl.”

Mateo shrugged carelessly. “So collar your Alpha too,” he suggested easily.

“I’m not wearing a collar,” Crowley grumbled, flushing hotly, then darting a look at Dean from the corner of his eye. “Am I? Are you going to make me?” Despite his angry, offended expression, his excitement at the idea was pointedly obvious even in his loose-fitting pants.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Stop teasing Crowley,” he told Mateo. “You know he gets all hot and bothered by that kind of talk.”

Mateo looked at Buddy and his eyes visibly softened. “He’s really starting to look well, Dean.  Another couple of months and he’ll regain all of his condition.”

“Well, he’s still a bit thin but the Vet said I should let him build his weight and muscle back gradually. It’s definitely easier now he’s got a full set of teeth.”

“Those aren’t teeth, Dean. They’re weapons,” Mateo countered, not disapprovingly. “I can’t believe how tame he is. I thought for sure he’d take months to even begin trusting you. But you don’t even leash him.”

Dean shrugged, chewing his lower lip with embarrassment. “He… um… he just seems to like me,” he said.

Mateo tossed his hair dramatically, descending from the Dias and approaching Dean with complete confidence despite the two huge beasts guarding the younger Omegá.  His confidence wasn’t misplaced. Juliet and Buddy, who were snarling openly at all other designations in the room, both completely ignored the approach of the small Queen and allowed him to reach Dean unimpeded.

“Of course he likes you,” Mateo said, slipping his arm through Dean’s and beginning to tug him from the room towards the Queen’s Floor without even bothering to announce their departure to any of his Pack members. “Even _I_ like you, despite hating you with a passion for completely undermining me in my own Pack Hall.” He grinned widely. “But there’s still more work to be done on your image, Dean.  I have representatives from four different Design Houses arriving to meet with you tomorrow morning. We need to decide how you think you want to be dressed to impress and then we’ll let the four of them fall over themselves producing sketches until you’re ready to choose one of them.”

Dean flushed slightly. “I’ve been gifted a line of credit with the House of Dior, but other than that I don’t have any way to buy clothes, Mateo. So I don’t see how these Design Houses wouldn’t be wasting their time with me. Castiel has been more than generous with his Hope Gifts. I don’t… well, I don’t want to appear covetous, you know? It would be really rude of me to ask for a line of credit somewhere else, I think, when he’s given me such a generous allowance with Dior.”

As they reached the Queen’s Floor, Mateo gestured imperiously to a couple of Alphas in the corridor and they opened the door they were guarding and stepped aside.  “I hope you’ll be comfortable in this one. I’m sure Sarah has already sorted you sufficient servants and installed your other Esne. She’s very efficient.”

“She was very welcoming,” Dean said politely. He’d met Raphael’s Beta Wife on his arrival at the Pack Hall and she had been like a smaller, somewhat plainer, version of Meg.  She’d quickly taken charge and arranged for Dean’s other six Esne to carry their luggage to the guest quarters. Since that luggage included such items as Buddy and Juliet’s huge beds, Dean had been glad not to be doing the lifting himself. Then Sarah had taken Jessica to meet the drudges that were going to be leant to the household for the duration of their visit.

The Philadelphia Pack Hall was far older in external appearance than the Pierre one. Clearly Raphael’s tastes ran more to the medieval than the modern. The apartment was all stone walls, and fur rugs, and hanging tapestries, with huge open fireplaces that were actually lit rather than just left as design features like in Pierre.  The floor was tiled and distinctly warm under his feet though, indicating the existence of underfloor heating and although the room was lit by wall mounted scones they were clearly electric rather than genuine flames.

It seemed that Raphael liked the visual aesthetics of medieval furnishings but only if they were supported by up to date technological comforts.

Otherwise, the apartment was identical in layout to the one he was staying at in Pierre.  It was obvious that Daniel’s comment that all the Pack Halls had been built to the same blue print were correct.  So he supposed this hall also had the same ‘back doors’ and secret passages.

Mateo waited until they were seated in the parlour with glasses of wine in their hands before returning to the conversation about the clothes.

“The thing about Hope Gifts, Dean, is that you don’t only get them from one admirer.  You’ve been gifted a $250,000 of credit to spend with any or all of the four Design Houses visiting tomorrow,” he confessed excitedly.

Dean blinked slowly, stroking Buddy as he considered his response.  Unlike other Big Cats, he’d discovered that Mountain Lions purred, and there was something intensely soothing about Buddy’s contented rumblings whenever he hit that particular sweet spot behind the cat’s ear.

“A hope gift from whom?” he asked cautiously.

“You’ll never believe it when I tell you,” Mateo said, his eyes bright with excitement.  “It’s even possible, if it’s not the shared Winchester DNA that has caused your signature match with Castiel, that this Primá might also be your True Mate.”

Dean’s mouth dropped open in shock. “How can I have more than one true mate?”

“How can you have one at all?” Mateo countered. “The idea of a ‘True Mate’ isn’t the romantic idea of a ‘Soul Mate’, a single solitary person perfect for you. It just refers to someone with a perfectly matching scent signature. I’m not saying your new suitor has that signature. I’m just saying it’s perfectly _possible_ because they’re so closely related to Castiel.”

“I thought Zuriel was mated already,” Dean said, totally confused.

“Oh, he is,” Mateo agreed dismissively. “Your admirer isn’t one of Castiel’s brothers. It’s one of his uncles.”

 “I know about Lucifer,” Dean said carefully, “He changes brides as often as most people change their car. So if the gift is from him, I don’t want it.”

“Of course you wouldn’t want a Hope gift from that skeevy skank,” Mateo agreed. “But it isn’t Lucifer who sent you the gift, it was Michael.”

“Michael?”

Mateo nodded, grinning widely. “Michael Sethson, Grandé of Canada. He’s seen a picture of you, apparently, and he is in luuurrve. He’s asking your permission to come to make a formal initial courting visit whilst you are our guest.  It would have been politically problematic for him to visit Pierre, but now the Confederacy is in an alliance with Canada, our borders are really fluid.

“But he’s made it absolutely clear that the Hope Gift is merely in exchange for your _consideration_ of whether he might meet you, not in exchange for your agreement to actually do so.  So you can say no, if you like, and you still get the cash.  It’s win, win, isn’t it?”

“How old is he?”

“Ahh, barely late sixties which is nothing for a Primá. He doesn’t look more than a couple of years older than Castiel. Definitely doesn’t look any older than Raphael.”

“It’s not that,” Dean said, nibbling his lower lip. “I don’t know much about Michael, but surely he’s got a bride already.”

Mateo chuckled. “Well, you would certainly expect him to have one. But, actually, no. Michael’s original bride was a beautiful, soft, shy Danish princess. But Lars was not a strong boy. He was quite consumptive from the moment he arrived in the Americas and the climate in Canada was not kind to him.  He bore only three pups before he passed over the veil.  That was twenty years ago. You are the first Omegá that Michael’s taken an interest in since.  Michael is definitely no Lucifer. He was content to remain a widowed Primá forever until he saw your picture. So maybe it’s something in the Adam DNA that is drawn to you.”

“What’s he like?” Dean asked.

“Tall. Handsome. Clever. Decent. Respectable. Dour. Humourless. Boring as fuck,” Mateo replied, ticking off an invisible list on his fingers. “But then I could have said pretty much the same about Castiel before you caused him to become so much more interesting during the Conclave.  Maybe Michael’s the same. Maybe he just needs some vava-ving injecting into him to thaw his icy veins. If anyone can warm up the blood of those stuffy Primáres, I suspect it’s you, Dean.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Domina turns out to be totally irresistible to them.  That’s the thing about the quiet, grim, self-important Primás. I think their inner Alpha is just desperate for a bit of domination as the lower Alphas are.”

Dean laughed delightedly.

Then paused for thought.

He actually felt guilty considering it. It felt like he was being ‘unfaithful’ to Castiel even wondering whether to accept a meeting with Michael.

But that was ridiculous.

Castiel wasn’t his Primá.

Castiel wasn’t apparently even his one and only possible true mate.

Which was an odd concept.

Maybe it wouldn’t actually hurt to say yes to a meeting. If nothing else, it might help clarify how he actually felt about Castiel.

“Just a meeting?”

“Completely chaperoned,” Mateo assured him. “And I bet he’ll literally wet himself trying to give you a formal greeting with Buddy sitting at your thigh, so if nothing else that will be worth it just for the laugh.”

Dean snickered at the image.

He shrugged.

“Well, I guess it couldn’t hurt,” he said.

“You don’t need to decide yet,” Mateo pointed out. “Since I can honestly report you fulfilled the request to _consider_ the prospect, we now have oodles of money to spend on your wardrobe. Let’s concentrate on bankrupting Canada before you make a final decision one way or the other.

 “Now, I was thinking about leather maybe, and black silks and …..”

As the little Queen started throwing suggestions his way, Dean let Buddy’s purrs sooth his nerves and decided Mateo was right. He’d wait and make his decision in a few days.

Whilst wearing a new wardrobe.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


	102. Chapter Ninety Seven

The first words her husband greeted her with on his return from his brief trip to Canada were, “Do you want a pup?”

Meg’s mouth dropped open in astonishment. 

There were not many occasions Castiel had managed to render her speechless, but this was definitely one of them.

“No,” he said, “seriously,” mistaking her silence for the assumption he was joking with her. “Do you have the urge to be impregnated?”

“Well,” she said, finally, after several moments confused reflection. “Even if I weren’t your wife, making the prospect totally impossible, I’d frankly rather dig my eye out with a rusty spoon. I’ll be perfectly satisfied to be Beta Mom to all the little rugrats Dean pops out if you can ever learn enough social graces to secure him as your bride. Take it from me, that question out of your mouth was not a prime example of tactful enquiry so you probably still have a way to go on perfecting your charm.”

Castiel flushed slightly. “I suppose I could have phrased it better,” he admitted, “but I was just desperate to know whether Michael is right. He claims that Beta women have pretty much the same reproductive imperative as Omegares, though obviously not to the same degree.”

“What inspired that particular conversation?” she asked, intrigued despite her irritation at the line of questioning.

“I visited the Omegá Retirement Community he’s created in Elk Island. It’s absolutely wonderful,” he enthused. “Every one of the rescued Chinese Omagáres has their own private lodge, with gorgeously designed gardens in private lakeside yards, and Beta servants to look after them.There are communal facilities, like restaurants and lounges and even medical units. The Omegáres even brought their own Chinese Esne with them, though they’re even weirder than the American ones. They all dress like Geishas in silk robes, with heavily painted faces and elaborate head-dresses.”

“The Omegáres?”

“No. The Esne. The Omegáres are tiny and exotic and stunningly gorgeous, of course, but they dress really plainly in white silk robes, with loose-worn hair as long and black as Mateo’s. I suppose they don’t feel they need any embellishments to their own natural beauty. Besides, the Chinese regard Omegáres as actual living goddesses, rather than Queens, so they seem to avoid wearing 'royal’ trappings and jewellery and such items. They aim instead at looking spiritual and pure and uncaring of worldly possessions altogether," Castiel explained.

“Well, considering the fate Michael saved them from I would think they would be happy to wear burlap these days. But what’s that got to do with me wanting a pup?” Meg demanded.

“I mentioned to Michael that despite the gorgeous surroundings and the fact the Omegáres are obviously relieved to have survived their proscribed fate in their homeland, and all seem to be perfectly content, none of them seemed particularly ‘happy’. They all seemed, honestly, on the borderline of a clinical depression. Which led us, naturally, into discussing how terrible it is that a widowed Omegá is left barren, ensuring that no other Primá will ever offer them a mating bite. I’m not sure whether it’s the inability to have pups or the inability to attract a new mate that causes their depression, really, but regardless it's a tragic thing. 

"Even my own grandmother, Evan, chose to suicide rather than face that future himself. And I believe it's Evan's death that is driving Michael. It turns out that he has a huge medical facility in Banff that is dedicated purely to investigating the problem. Seeing if modern medicine and technology can solve the mysteries of Omegá reproduction. Michael's hoping he might eventually be able to offer his guest Omegáres the hope of perhaps restoring their ability to reproduce and thus the potential of mating again in the future. Few of them are more than fifty and all of them are still very beautiful. Even if it takes another decade or two of research, the Chinese Omegáres still are young enough to have something to hope for in Canada."

“That sounds wonderful,” Meg agreed. “But I’m not seeing the correlation between them wanting to be impregnated again and me.”

“Well, a side effect of Michael’s research is that his doctors have developed an almost foolproof method of IVF. It hasn’t proven of any use to Omegáres yet but is almost invariably effective for Beta women. So as part of Michael’s free medical clinics for the Canadian Free Betas, Michael is now offering IVF treatment too. The Free Betas have their own version of IVF, obviously, but it's prohibitively expensive and often fails to succeed. Michael is offering free treatment with a 95% success rate. He’s been so inundated with demand that he’s already spread the clinics to South America and the Confederacy. The reason he needed me to visit was to prepare some legal documents to allow his charitable foundation to offer the service to American Betas too. There’s a few political niceties that need to be addressed to make it possible.”

“It’s a nice idea,” she agreed, “and if the Betas can benefit from the research to help the Omegáres then, why not? Although surely the problem in our world is the fact that there’s already too many damned Betas anyway. And, I’m saying that despite being a Beta myself.”

“That’s what I said to Michael,” Castiel admitted. “But he said it was still his humanitarian duty to soothe the grief of Beta women who are incapable of conceiving. He says they are going to take no comfort from the idea of ‘other’ Beta women having babies, since they have an imperative to have their own. Hence my question to you.”

Meg nodded her understanding, finally, of why he’d asked her whether she wanted a pup of her own.

“I think Michael’s right, as a rule,” she agreed. “Whilst there are many Beta women content to adopt children or not have them at all, I believe the majority do definitely have the desire to have their own offspring. It is quite a natural urge. So he’s doing a good thing, I suppose. Even if he helps tens of thousands of Beta women to conceive, I don’t suppose it makes much difference to the overall population problem. There are already several billion too many Betas in the world. A few more won’t change anything really except offer happiness to some individual unhappy women.”

Castiel nodded his agreement. “And that made me think of you.”

“Unhappy women?” Meg demanded, with an irritated sniff.

“No. The fact that Beta Wives never have pups,” he said. “I’d never thought about it before. Whether it was a problem for them, for YOU.”

Meg thought about it seriously. “Well, I suspect Colette might have liked to have pups of her own. As scary as she seems sometimes, I think she was a splendid Beta mom to you and your brothers and I get the feeling sometimes that she would have liked a few more pups just of her own. Sarah is a bit broody. She despairs of Mateo ever conceiving again. Matty’s a peculiar Omegá because his desire to have another pup is completely negated by his desire to keep his figure. But I admit I’m completely on board with his point of view. I haven’t spent years making myself look this good just to throw it all away on a mummy tummy.”

Castiel laughed. “Joshua was back to perfect shape so quickly it’s impossible to believe he has had pups at all,” he pointed out. “Besides, I think its quite attractive to see a woman or an Omegá who’s pregnant and if my mate retains some of his pregnancy weight, I’ll probably find that equally attractive. I’d look at his body post pregnancy and all I’d see is what it gifted me.”

“That’s actually quite sweet,” she said, “but my body image is about how I see myself, not about how you see me. Besides, it isn't like you could get me pregnant anyway. That’s the whole point of Beta wives not having pups, isn’t it? It isn’t as though anyone would believe I was walking around with your pup inside me. Every Beta Wife marries in the full knowledge her husband will be unable to impregnate her, so I sincerely doubt any particularly maternally inclined Betas would ever apply for the position in the first place."

“I know," Castiel said. “But I’ve been thinking about what you said to me about Dean when you convinced me to gift him Crowley. About how I didn’t have the right to object about what Dean chooses to do with his body. The same surely has to go for you, Meg. And if I don’t have the right to dictate your behaviour then fuck anyone else who has a problem with the idea that your body is yours to do with as you see fit. It’s nobody's business, except ours, what happens within our marriage and if anyone has a problem with anything we mutually agree on then they can keep their opinions to themselves. Besides, who would they complain to? It's not as though I’m accountable to anyone, is it? So if you do want a pup, I want you to know I would be okay with it as long as it's sired by one of my First Alphas. Benny or Victor or even Mick would all make pretty pups.”

“It would cause a complete scandal,” she chuckled. “I don’t think a Beta Wife has ever gotten herself in pup by a First Alpha in known history. The other Primáres might not be able to actually criticise you for allowing it but I think a lot of scandal and gossip would be inevitable."

Castiel shrugged. “I’m beginning to realise that my household is going to be the subject of scandal anyway when I mate an Omegá as strong-willed as Dean, so I don’t think you popping out a pup or two is going to even register one way or the other in the grand scheme of things."

“I’ll consider it,” Meg promised. “I was pretty sure I was fine with the idea of never having a pup. Now you’ve suggested it’s possible, I’m wondering whether I was just being resigned to the impossibility of it because now I’m actually feeling a bit tempted. Still, I’d only think about it if you mate Dean because the only Alpha I’d ever consider sirng my pup is Crowley.”

Castiel did a double-take. “Seriously? I thought he was always your last ‘any port in a storm’ option; the one you only took to your bed if I had taken Benny and Victor out of town.”

Meg shrugged. “You just don’t understand what makes Crowley tick, Castiel. It was me telling him he was my last choice that made it so much fun for both of us. Despite spending the rest of his life demanding to be treated with respect, he absolutely adores being treated like dirt in the bedroom. He always got so turned on by the ‘humiliation’ of being treated like my unfortunate and reluctant only option that he always gave me the best shag ever. Besides, if I do have a pup I want it to be smart and Crowley has more brains than the other three put together. You have to assume some of that would rub off on his pups.”

Castiel nodded his agreement. “Let’s just hope his DNA doesn’t pass on his personality too,” he chuckled. “I’m not sure any Pack could manage to cope with two Crowleys.”

“But I assume from your confidence that Dean will still mate you that you don’t think Michael is going to prove any competition?” she asked curiously. “Because from what Sarah told me, Mateo thinks he might have a matching True Mate signature for Dean, just like you do.”

Castiel frowned in confusion. “Michael? Why on earth would Mateo think Michael would be interested in Dean at all, let alone have a matching scent signature? I don’t think Michael’s even heard of Dean. I certainly didn’t mention him. I was hardly going to tell my uncle that I’d met my true mate and immediately made such a complete and utter idiot of myself that I’d taken the first possible opportunity to jump on a plane and run home,” Castiel admitted ruefully.

Meg chewed her lower lip, her eyes narrowing suspiciously. “Let me be absolutely certain of something before I answer that. You just spent two days in Canada with your Uncle Michael and neither of you even mentioned Dean to each other?’

Castiel shook his head.

“Shit,” she said. “I thought Michael was supposed to be a decent guy.”

Castiel frowned, “What do you mean?”

“Well, do you have any idea what Dean’s been doing for the last couple of days? Spending a small fortune on Haute Couture.”

“He deserves to dress like a Queen,” Castiel replied staunchly. “Just because I think he needs a little time before we actually mate doesn’t mean he shouldn’t start acquainting himself with the accoutrements of his future life. I might not understand his desire to dress his pets up too, but told you I didn’t care how much of my money he spent on clothes.”

“That’s exactly my point, CP. It isn’t your money he’s been spending. It’s Michael’s.”

“WHAT?”

Meg nodded grimly. “Whilst Michael has kept you distracted with all his ‘good works’ in Canada, he’s been busy sending hope gifts to Dean.”

“Fucking underhanded, scum sucking, bastard, cunting, SON OF A BITCH!," Castiel snarled.

Meg grinned. “I knew you’d get the hang of swearing eventually.”


	103. Chapter Ninety Eight

Dean and Mateo sat in the Queen’s parlour and poured through the sketches and sample swatches with variable feelings of both excitement and disappointment. 

“Nothing’s quite right, is it?” Mateo sighed, glaring generally in the direction of the four Design House representatives who were all kneeling like penitents as they awaited the Omagáres judgements on their suggested designs.

“I admit nothing’s quite jumping out at me,” Dean admitted. “I like bits and pieces of each design but the entirety of all of them leaves me unimpressed. Though I do really like this material.” He lifted a sample of silk that was reminiscent of a Peacock tail, black overall but subtlety threaded throughout with a dark rainbow sheen of vibrant colours, and waved it at the Queen. “It’s like silk titanium.”

“OHH, yes,” Mateo purred. “That’s definitely you,” he agreed. “Very unique and it will work so well with your jewellery. But I hate what their bargain basement designers have done with it. We’ll use that particular fabric but discard the designs completely since they clearly ignored every word of the painstakingly explained brief. They seem to want to dress you like a cross between a dungeon mistress and a slutty barmaid.”

“That particular fabric is our own unique, patented design,” the Beta spluttered.

“Which you will be honoured to provide to the Domina for his sole use if he can find a Design House capable of using it appropriately,” Mateo snapped. 

“But I…”

Mateo snapped his fingers impatiently and two of his Esne flowed to position themselves to loom over the kneeling man. 

“Don’t test me,” he snarled. “Stand in my way and I’ll pick up the patent to the material before the end of the week out of the administrator’s firesale of your dissolved Company’s assets.”

The Beta paled significantly, as did the other three representatives. 

The Beta swallowed heavily, “As I…um…was saying,” he stuttered, “The House of Cardin would be honoured to provide its unique fabric for any purpose the Domina desires and henceforth retain it for his sole use only.”

Mateo smirked thinly and waved dismissively at the trembling Beta. “Do me a favour, Crowley dear, and take our impolite guest from Cardin away from my sight and ensure the paperwork confirming the Domina’s exclusivity is signed before he leaves Pack Land.”

Crowley waited for a nod from Dean before bowing his compliance, something that Mateo noted with approval. “Ah, but before you leave, Crowley, come take a look at this Marant design.”

The Alpha stepped forward, took the proffered piece of paper and gasped softly, his cheeks flushing with immediate heat. 

Mateo grinned. “Yes, ignore the stupid outfit they are suggesting for Dean in this sketch and look at the proposed co-ordinating outfit for his Queen’s Alpha. I particularly enjoy the unique leash, don’t you?”

Several expressions warred over Crowley’s face. “I do not believe Dean wishes for me to be presented that way in public,” he finally managed, with an attempt at coolness, despite the way he was shuffling awkwardly to attempt to disguise his physical response to the idea.

“Poor Crowley,” Mateo cooed. 

“Let me see,” Dean demanded, snatching the sketch out of Crowley’s trembling hand. “Oh, I see what you BOTH mean. Crowley is quite correct that I prefer him to wear more fabric than that. After all, his body belongs to me and I’m somewhat selfish about my personal possessions,” he said smoothly. “I see no benefit to me in displaying him for the Pack members. However, the leash design is very nice.”

Crowley whimpered low in his throat.

“You like that?” Dean asked, with a grin.

Crowley cleared his throat before attempting to answer. "It…um… is somewhat reminiscent of a bridle,” he suggested cautiously.

“Absolutely,” Mateo enthused. “I’ve never seen a leash quite so perfect for a Queen’s Alpha.”

Dean considered the design thoughtfully. The leather device had a dual strap at the front that fastened firmly around the cock and balls, ran the length of the perineum and attached to a curved, fat anal peg. Any tug on the cock ring would presumably cause the peg to press against the wearer’s prostate. It would be perfect for Randolph. Not so much for Crowley who would clearly prefer to wear the device under pants, thereby making the process of physically leashing him problematic at best. But it was quite obvious that Crowley liked the idea of the device itself and Dean was quite aware he wasn’t really fulfilling any of Crowley’s fantasies of being sexually abused as yet. Crowley was a bit of a conundrum in some ways. He was completely obsessed with the idea of being humiliated in private (or even in the intimate setting of Dean’s parlour in front of carefully selected guests) but drew the line at outright ’public’ humiliation.

“It’s a shame they didn’t take the design a step further,” he said. “A similar style of device with a remote controlled vibrating peg would be far more suitable for Crowley.”

This time Crowley’s whimper was loud enough that Juliet raised her head in faint alarm before huffing and settling down again when she realised there was no visible danger in the room.

Mateo chuckled. “You do realise if you play with him in a meeting, its going to look like he’s got a bad attack of wind or something?”

Dean shrugged. “I don’t know, Crowley. Do you think you could keep it together in public, wearing that under your clothes, not knowing if or when I might press the button?”

“Oh, please,” Crowley mumbled. “Please feel free to test my self-control in that way.”

“The design could certainly be adapted to your specified requirements,” the Marant representative assured them.

Dean smirked at Crowley’s hopeful expression and nodded his agreement to the waiting Beta. “About the design for the Queen’s Alpha outfit. I really like the weapons harness and the black leather thigh and shoulder plates,” he said. “Using the Cardin fabric, and the cloak design from the original suggestion for me, can your designers work on something that incorporates all three?”

“Oooh,” Mateo said, as he understood what Dean was asking for. “You’re right. The problem with all the designs is they’re too fey for you. You want to play up your more butch physique rather than conceal it.”

“I think it’s a mistake for me to try and look like a normal Omega when it’s blatantly obvious that I’m not,” Dean explained. “Instead of wearing clothes that detract from my musculature, I think I want to wear outfits that emphasise it. I was trying to imagine a design based on some compromise between the style of clothes that you wear and Daniel’s style, but none of it was really gelling. But seeing the design Marant suggested for Crowley, I can see a picture in my head of how that would possibly work better for me. They’ve come up with a totally inappropriate outfit for a Queen’s Alpha but, oddly, it’s one that has real potential for to be an outfit for an Alpha Queen.”

“I can see it,” Mateo enthused. “Let’s send the three remaining contenders back with that idea in their heads and see what they come up with.”

“We could…” the Cardin representative began.  
“Crowley,” Mateo snapped. “This tradesman I have already dismissed from my presence still has had the temerity to speak directly to me again.”

Before Crowley had the chance to even move, the two waiting Esne physically hauled the offending representative to his feet and began manhandling him out of the apartment. 

“Oops,” Dean said, at the grim look on the Esne’s faces. “It looks like Crowley is going to need to get that paperwork signed in the dungeons.”

“The Esne are quite horribly strict with their fellow Betas for any perceived slight to their charges,” Mateo agreed. “I doubt he’ll get off Pack Lands without a thoroughly strapped ass. Speaking of which,” he continued, as Crowley ushered the other Betas out of the door, “ have you given any thought to paddling Crowley?”

“Huh?”

“I don’t want to stick my nose in where it doesn’t belong,” Mateo said, “but from Crowley’s reaction to the idea of the leash, it’s quite obvious his kink level is on the high side. It might be worth you considering the idea of spanking him whenever he displeases you. I think he’d love it.”

Dean flushed a little, remembering his own reactions to having his bottom reddened. “I imagine he possibly would,” he agreed. 

“You should make a game of it, maybe,” Mateo suggested. He lowered his voice, aware of the servants in the room. “I’ll let you into a secret, Dean. Even Raphael likes being disciplined that way sometimes.”

Dean blinked in astonishment. “Really?”

“I tell no lie,” Mateo agreed, nodding firmly. “The night of the conclave, he was still feeling so bad about disrespecting you that he practically begged me to ‘correct’ him. Obviously, it was more of a sex game than a real discipline spanking,” he admitted, “but he still found it pretty uncomfortable to fly to Sioux Falls the next morning. I always use a paddle, rather than my hand, otherwise it would hurt me more than him to do it. So I’m thinking maybe you should have a naughty corner in your parlour. Make sure the next time I am visiting you, Crowley has done something to warrant being knelt in the corner with a red ass on display before I arrive. I swear he will cream himself at the idea of being displayed like that. If you aren’t actually going to ‘use’ him, you should at least give him a bit of sexy fun discipline and it’s not going to be hard to come up with excuses to spank him, is it?”

“Well he does have a habit of arguing with me,” Dean agreed. “I suppose I could bring in a three strikes and you’re spanked rule, just to be sure he’s on board with the idea. I find it difficult to judge sometimes, Mateo. I’ve been the recipient of too much abuse to ever run the risk of being an abuser myself.”

Mateo sighed sadly, “Those Beta fuckers ruin everything, don’t they? They take what ought to be just fun between consenting adults and twist it into some kind of messed up perversion. Of course you’re finding it hard to adjust. But trust Crowley, Dean. He’s old enough and smart enough to know exactly what he’s doing. If a ‘scene’ ever gets too much for him, he’ll let you know immediately. He’s a good, safe man to test the waters with. You need to start owning your own sexuality, experimenting a bit, finding out what does and doesn’t work for you. Better you test that on someone as teflon as Crowley before you commit yourself into a relationship with someone as uptight as Castiel or Michael. Speaking of which, have you had any thoughts on Michael? I only ask because Castiel called Raphael in a stinking fury this morning. He’s just found out about his competition.”

“Oh?” Dean asked, his eyes brightening at the thought.

“He’s pretty insane over it. Turns out he’s been with Michael the last couple of days and Michael never said anything about wanting to court you. Then again, Castiel had to admit that he hadn’t told Michael about courting you either, so Raphael says they’re both as bad as each other. He’s point blank refused to let either of them visit you without your express permission. If you were still in Pierre, Ophriel wouldn’t be able to refuse a visit from his Grandé (though I wouldn’t put it past him to try to stop him anyway, since he’s a stubborn old bastard) but Castiel has absolutely no authority here so the ball is entirely in your court, Dean.”

Dean chewed his lower lip fretfully. “What if I don’t want either of them to visit?”

“Then tough titties to both of them. I imagine we’ll receive an embarrassing amount of hope gifts from both directions until you decide one way or the other. There’s nothing like a bit of competition to bring out the worst in Primáres."

“Castiel is really jealous?” Dean asked carefully.

“Livid,” Mateo agreed.

“Because he really likes me, or because he thinks he already pissed a circle around me?”

Mateo barked a laugh. “Well, probably a bit of both,” he admitted.

Dean thought about it, then nodded. “Ask Raphael to tell Michael I would be open to a visit,” he said, firmly. “And…um… it doesn’t need to be a secret.”

“I see,” Mateo said, with a grin of approval. “You mean invite Michael and make sure Castiel knows you’ve done so?”

Dean blushed but nodded.

“You really like him, don’t you?”

Dean shrugged awkwardly. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “If you mean do I fancy him then, hell to the yeah. But that’s not enough, is it?”

“Well, not when you consider the fact that physically both Castiel and Michael are equally attractive in very similar ways,” Mateo admitted. “If you have a ‘type’, I imagine both would equally fulfil the criteria physically and both are powerful, smart and rich as fuck. The question will probably come down to which one you like best or which one smells best to you. I hesitate to say it but if Michael isn’t a True Mate match but is close enough, you might even prefer him. You strike me as the kind of Omegá who’d probably hate feeling biologically influenced. The problem with True Mate matches is it always seems to be the Omegá who is more affected by the bond. I imagine you might prefer the upper hand in a relationship but I’m absolutely positive you’d hate to be at a disadvantage.”

Dean considered Mateo’s words. He appreciated the little Queen’s warning though he was feeling reasonably sure he wasn’t a ‘typical’ Omegá where the True Mate influence was concerned and he was beginning to suspect he might have begun to develop a tolerance to the scent effect because of Azazel’s drugs. Maybe it was like having a vaccination. He’d received a small dose of the ‘infection’ and had begun to develop antibodies against it. He couldn’t think of any other reason he had felt so in control of himself in close vicinity to Castiel as the lidocaine had begun to wear off. It would be ironic if he ended up feeling grateful for the manipulation done to him by the Free Beta agent.

“I’m not agreeing to anything except a single chaperoned meeting,” he told Mateo firmly. “Just to find out where the land lies. Who knows? Maybe I won’t choose either of them.”

“Well, there are far more unmated Primáres in the world than there are available Omegáres, Dean. You can afford to take your time and choose carefully,” Mateo agreed. “But let’s see what Michael has to offer.”


	104. Chapter Ninety Nine

“Are you sure this will work?” Michael asked, as Alastair prepared the needles and syringes necessary to perform the injections. “I have to be in Philadelphia tomorrow. There’s only ever one chance to make a first impression.”

The thin Beta sneered slightly, either at Michael’s doubt or his cheesy comment.  “Of course it will work. We already know how to reproduce Castiel’s pheromone signature artificially. Because we’ve mapped it so precisely, adapting your signature to match it is actually a lot easier than you’d imagine. You’re already at least an 85% scent match to your nephew. Making the hormonal adjustments necessary to temporarily alter the balance of your signature to 100% is rather straightforward.  

“Admittedly, it would be a lot more difficult if you wanted to do it _permanently_ but, between these injections and the slow release patch, you’ll share Dean’s True Mate signature for a good three months. If you can’t get him to accept your bite in that time, we can always do the procedure again. Obviously, once you’re bonded it doesn’t matter if the signature fades. 85% is close enough and, anyway, there aren’t any take-backs in mating bites.”

“Well, obviously, I don’t actually want to _mate_ him,” Michael clarified. “I thought you knew that. As long as my signature is enough to convince him to return to Canada with me for a ‘vacation’ to see whether Canada might be a place he’d like to live, we can do what we need to do to him and then send him back to Philadelphia. If we drug him for the procedure, he might never even know it’s been done.  Then I manage to convince him that Castiel is a more attractive option after all and he goes back to America. That’s the optimal plan. I have absolutely no intention of mating Dean myself. I never did.”

“I see.  You do realise he’ll be barren when I’ve finished with him,” Alastair pointed out. “That’s why I imagined you’d mate him yourself after I’d removed his ovaries. You’re the one that is always complaining I don’t respect Omegáres enough. So I imagined you’d feel obliged to look after him after you’ve ruined him for your nephew. At the very moment of the mating bite, when his nose is that close to his womb, Castiel will scent Dean is barren and will almost certainly immediately withdraw his offer.”

“Dean won’t be _ruined_ ,” Michael scoffed. “As long as he’s supported with hormonal injections, there’s no reason he can’t be given the IVF the same as any other barren Omegá. We could impregnate him with his own fertilised eggs.”

“Which only works if he has a Primá who knows the procedure exists,” Alastair countered. “So by keeping him as your own bride, you would at least guarantee his chance to be a mother.  I can’t see any way that Castiel would agree to mate a barren bride. It’s not like he’s going to be aware of the success of our project for several more years at least, by which time he will inevitably have rejected Dean altogether. And if it happened at such an intimate moment, I can’t imagine any scenario in which Dean would later forgive him. So you’re setting both of them up for heart break, aren’t you?”

“Poor Dean,” Michael agreed, as the truth of the situation belatedly hit him.  “You’re absolutely certain we can’t let him keep his ovaries and just extract a few eggs at a time?”

“You can’t just kidnap a well-known, unmated Omegá and keep him captive indefinitely without anybody coming after him. And the eggs will be of no use to us the moment he’s bonded to anyone. You know they need to be eggs from an _unmated_ Omegá. Specifically, an unmated ‘Winchester’ Omegá. So either Dean or Adam are our only current options,” Alastair pointed out. “It would have all been a lot easier if we could have used Adam instead. We could have avoided an awful lot of trouble and my poor brother would still be alive. But Chuck insists it should be Dean and is simply holding onto Adam to offer as a consolation prize to Castiel for losing his True Mate. He isn’t quite a match but he isn’t far off and I could always tweak him a little, I suppose, so that Castiel can’t tell the difference.”

“Adam’s still just a little pup,” Michael pointed out.

Alastair shrugged nonchalantly. “He still has a pair of ovaries filled with the eggs we need and ‘he’ doesn’t have a True Mate to be heartbroken by what we’re doing. Plus, no-one would come after Adam if Chuck just handed him over into your keeping. None of the Queens even know Adam exists, so no questions would be asked. We could just keep him here in the lab, harvest his eggs regularly and still keep him fully fertile. Though, realistically, it’s a poor solution to the problem because we need as many eggs as we can get into storage. We have to allow for arrested development in many of the embryos. And both Adam and Dean are losing maybe a 1000 eggs a month each as they age. It’s a game of diminishing returns. It would make far more sense to just operate on both of them, whip their ovaries out and get all the eggs secured immediately.”

Michael’s mouth moued with displeasure. “I don’t want _both_ of them left barren. I’m rather fond of Castiel and I don’t want him spending the best part of the next two decades alone whilst he waits for one of the new Omegá pups to mature. Chuck insists that Cassie will never accept any Omegá who isn’t a Winchester one, now that he’s scented Dean for himself.”

“Maybe we should wait a year and then track down one of the new Omegá pups instead. Newborns have far more eggs to harvest anyway,” Alastair suggested.

Michael shook his head. “Chuck insists we can’t wait that long.  Even a year or two’s delay at this point could put everything at risk, apparently.  He says the Chinese Omegáres have to be impregnated with their Primá pups this year. The timing is critical. And the specific urgency was caused by your ‘poor’ brother kicking other events into play too early, so blame Azazel if you want to throw any blame out there.  Whatever. What’s done is done, time is against us now and it’s definitely got to be either Dean or Adam who gets sacrificed.”

“Well, you have to imagine the Omadonna knows what he’s doing,” Alastair said, with a shrug of defeat. “Why else would the Winchester Omegáres be the only ones in the world whose eggs are resistant to embryonic diapause?  The minute those little buggers are fertilised the zygotes zip straight to the nearest uterine wall and start developing. If I’d realised how intense their inbuilt desire to grow is, I could have saved you a fortune, Michael.  The entire Elk Island paradise ‘retirement’ resort village was a completely unnecessary expense.  All that money spent on making sure the Omegáres were safe and happy and content, so they wouldn’t be subject to obligate diapause after implantation, and it turns out you could have just kept all of them here in the labs in cages and they still would have popped out pups like clockwork.”

“Speaking of cages, how is Ravan doing these days?” Michael asked. “I trust you moved him to a better living situation as I ‘suggested’. He was Lucifer’s bride once. That warrants a level of respect regardless of his current mental condition.”

“He’s got his own little apartment on the third floor now and a couple of full time nurses,” Alastair assured him.  “Actually, I just used him as one of the test subjects for the eggs I took from Dean in Sioux Falls. He’s already got a little Winchester pup busily growing inside him and he’s just sitting there rocking with happiness.  He might not understand much of anything these days, but being pregnant still makes him glow with pleasure.  Of course, because of his lobotomy, the successful implantation wasn’t proof of the egg’s resilience as Ravan’s too mindless for embryonic diapause to even be a factor, but it proved that as long as an egg hasn’t been previously contaminated by any bonding signature, it can be fertilised by any Primá sperm and grown in any Omegá womb. Lucifer wanted me to use his sperm, since he quite liked the idea of another pup from Ravan, but that wouldn’t have been the same scientific miracle as Ravan producing a pup from a completely different Sire.  So I popped one of your sperm into the egg, instead. Congratulations, Michael, it’s a boy.

“But the two Chinese Omegáres I have here as test subjects rejected every IVF from unmated egg donors. Their unhappiness at their widowhood and their accommodations prevented every previous attempt at impregnation. The zygotes remained dormant even when I improved their living conditions and moved them out of the lab into proper bedrooms. So short of performing lobotomies on them too, which you personally forbade, there would have been no way of enforcing pregnancy on them under any normal circumstance.

“However, after getting hold of Dean’s eggs, I scraped out the original zygotes that weren't developing, replaced them with Winchester ones, put the subjects back in the lab and, despite the unhappiness of the Omegáres, both zygotes still immediately attached and began to grow.  It’s only been a few weeks, obviously, so I’m keeping a close eye on all three of them, but I have every reason to believe in ten months there will be three new Primáres in the world, courtesy of Dean Winchester. That’s like taking the idea of virgin birth to a completely new level.”

“I understand the necessity to make them unhappy to prove you had found a way to overcome the diapause,” Michael said. “But surely they can now be moved to Elk Island with the others.”

“I need to keep them at least until the end of the first trimester, and the uncomfortable conditions are part of the experimentation.  We need to be certain the Winchester zygotes don’t just have an initial survival imperative that is short-lived and subject to later rejection by their host wombs.  I need to be absolutely certain that once the pups are implanted, they stay the course.  Don’t you remember what happened when I tried implanting Primá pups into Beta subjects? I don’t want to run the risk of Omegáren wombs bursting open and them bleeding out the same way.”

“Even so, I don’t like the idea of you keeping the Chinese Omegáes in cages, like laboratory animals,” Michael protested. “They are Omegáres. They should be treated with respect.”

Alastair shrugged. “Well, at least we’ve moved beyond needing to perform lobotomies before we can implant eggs into a barren womb,” he pointed out. “But I can’t do the work I need to do if my test subjects are being treated like prissy princesses. I need to keep an eye on them 24/7 and ensure absolutely no external factors influence their pregnancies. Keeping them in sterile cages is the only way to obtain scientifically valid data.  Sadly, you just need to accept that these two subjects are necessary sacrifices in this war.  All the other Chinese Omegáres are going to be living in luxury in Elk Island, with little pups running around their feet. Surely their ecstatic happiness will go some way to compensating for the sad sacrifice of the two who are making it possible for them.”

Michael nodded his reluctant agreement.

“Okay,” Alastair said, as he injected the final dose.  “By tomorrow morning, your scent signature will be totally indistinguishable from Castiel’s.  I should warn you, though, that I haven’t just masked your own pheromones, I have changed them at a chemical and hormonal level. That means _you_ are going to be equally susceptible to Dean’s scent. He would already have smelt good to you, as an 85% match, but now your nose will definitely read him as your True Mate.  Please don’t go falling head over heels in love with him as a result.”

“I’m a Primá,” Michael scoffed dismissively. “It’s Omegáres who can’t keep their legs shut when they scent their True Mates. Primáres always have total control of themselves. I haven’t spent twenty years working on this plan to let it fall down just because I smell a sweet Omegáren cunt. Dean Winchester is just a means to an end, Alastair, and no scent signature in the world is ever going to make me forget the overriding importance of the real purpose I’m visiting Philadelphia for.”

“If you say so,” Alastair agreed, turning away to conceal his smirk at Michael’s arrogance. Unlike the Primá, Alastair had met Dean and, despite the unfortunate circumstances of that meeting, was fully aware of the power of Dean’s striking looks.  

He wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’d soon be getting a cage ready for Adam Winchester after all.

 

 

 

 

 


	105. Chapter One Hundred

"So no words of warning or predictions of impending doom?" Dean asked curiously, then sneezed.

"I told you to take that anti-histamine earlier but, no, you didn't listen did you? Always think you know better, stupid pup."

"First strike, Crowley," Dean warned.

Crowley writhed with excitement.

"Stop moving. It tickles my feet," Dean complained.

"Then maybe they are warm enough for you to stop using my ass to heat them on," Crowley suggested snidely.

Dean wiggled his toes experimentally. "Nope," he decided. "Still feeling a bit cold."

"There's underfloor heating," Crowley pointed out. "I can confirm it works, since I'm lying face down on it."

"In a perfect position for me to rest my feet on," Dean agreed, stroking Buddy contentedly.

Sitting on a couch kitty-corner to Dean, Jessica snickered softly. Several bolts of the exclusive silk had arrived the day before from the House of Cardin and, although it would be several more days before they might even have hope of receiving any of the new designs ordered from the other Houses, Jessica had been up most of the night hand-sewing a cloak out of the new fabric simply so that Dean would look particularly dramatic for his meeting with Michael later that day.

"You didn't answer my question about Michael," Dean pointed out, to the back of Crowley's head

"Honestly? I think Michael's a complete tool," Crowley replied. "Too damned handsome for his whole pious mien. I don't buy into the sanctimonious bullshit. No one who looks like that has any business playing the 'holier than thou' gig. It ought to be a punishable offence to preach abstention whilst looking like walking sin."

Dean chuckled. "You mean all ascetic people should be ugly?"

"They should at least look cadaverously skinny and ill like malnourished vegans," Crowley suggested. "The only really devout folk in the Packs are the Esne and at least their peculiar looks deliberately set them apart from worldly indulgences. Michael's all about doing public good-works and spouting boring diatribes about helping the less fortunate, whilst he prances around looking like a male model and exudes power like he's so full of it that it simply leaks out of his pores."

"Paws? What paws? He's got paws?"

"I assume you're mocking my accent again, though it's hard to tell when I'm talking to a floor tile," Crowley grumbled.

"If you don't stop whining, I'll make you sit in a seat like a real boy," Dean warned. "You wanted to be my footstool. You begged me. And now all you're doing is whinging about it."

"I was hoping you'd wear your heels," Crowley muttered into the floor. "It's better with stilettos."

"Ohhhh, I forgot to tell you, Jess. Guess what Castiel sent me this morning? Thigh length black patent boots by Louboutin. Mateo said if I wore them he'd never speak to me again. I swear they have five inch heels. But the soles are so pretty it seems a shame to scuff them. Crowley took one look at them and almost fainted on the spot."

"Why do you think I asked to lie down here? I hoped you'd take advantage of using me as a sole protector," Crowley grumbled.

"And speaking of souls, is Michael really such a religious bore?"

"In my opinion," Crowley said, "although you might think his pretty face and big dick compensate for the drivel that comes out of his mouth. I don't suppose conversational repartee is high on the list of preferred requirements for a Primá. Money, power, big dick and cute face usually tick enough boxes for the personality to be pretty irrelevant. Just as well, since all the Adam Primáres are total knobs."

"Even Castiel?"

"Well, I'm prejudiced," Crowley admitted. "But I definitely think Cas is far and above the best of the lot. It's not his fault he was brought up with typical Primá attitudes and you've got to give him credit for trying really hard to break his own bad habits. Of course, you have to give a lot of that credit to Meg too. She's like a steady outpouring of acid rain on Castiel's defences. She's wearing him down so fast into a decent guy that he's already barely recognisable to the jumped up little poppenjay I first met. And, to be completely fair to Castiel, he married her in full knowledge of her personality so I think he must have wanted to change. Why subject himself to such a critical wife if he didn't believe her words had merit?"

"Point," Dean agreed. "But you don't think its wrong of me to see Michael? I thought you'd be in Castiel's camp."

Crowley rolled over and sat up. "Listen, Squirrel, I'm not going to lie to you. Of course I'm hoping you choose Castiel in the end. I like Detroit, I love Meg, I even miss Benny's big cock. Being in the middle of a Meg and Benny sandwich was usually the high point of my week. Plus, being perfectly honest, I think Castiel's a sweet guy who means well and, most importantly, is fully trainable. You need to think of him as a gangly puppy who still needs to be regularly smacked on the nose with a rolled up newspaper. Sure he chews the furniture and piddles on the floor now and then but he'll eventually grow out of it."

"I heard it wasn't piddling on the floor that was his problem," Jessica pointed out, with a giggle. "Morgana said they needed an entire gallon of industrial strength detergent to clean the dias in Pierre."

Dean smirked proudly at the memory.

"Still," Crowley continued. "I'm not Castiel's Alpha anymore, Dean. I'm yours. That means the only camp I'm sitting in is Team Domina. Of course, I'd be happier lying in Team Domina with your 'booted' feet on my ass."

"I'm not standing on you in stiletto heels," Dean said, firmly. "I don't think you realise how heavy I actually am. I'd probably puncture your buttocks."

"I'm an Alpha. I'd heal," Crowley pointed out, with a grin and a wriggle of his eyebrows.

"You're a sick, sick man," Dean pronounced. "Tell you what. I'm not going to stand on you in them, but if you fetch them I'll at least put them on and let you drool a bit."

"Maybe he'll let you kneel there and lick them," Jessica suggested sweetly.

"Fuck you, Bitch," Crowley snarled, as he skipped past her in search of the boots.

"Second strike," Dean yelled after him, and was rewarded by a yelp of excitement.

"You do realise he only calls me names to get disciplined by you," Jessica pointed out.

"He's an odd man," Dean agreed. "But I like him."

"I don't suppose my opinion matters that much, but I think meeting Michael is wise," Jessica said. "Like Crowley, of course I'm hoping we'll end up back in Detroit eventually. I miss my family. But if I were an Omegá, like you, and only had one chance to make my decision of mate, I'd be damned careful about the choosing. Maybe we should go travelling next. I bet Mateo would be happy to lend you Raphael's jet if you want to go to Europe. Maybe even Norway. It's supposed to be the best place ever to be an Omegá . And I bet all the Norwegian Primáres look like big, husky vikings. They'd probably adore Buddy and Juliet."

Crowley scampered back, clutching the Louboutins like they were royal jewels, and indeed dropped to his knees to help Dean to put them on.

Dean sniffed the air pointedly. "You're leaking, Crowley."

"I can't help it," the alpha moaned. "You look so damned... dangerous... in those. All you need is a whip, maybe, and..... ohhh, hang on," and he leapt back to his feet and scurried in the direction of his bedroom.

"You do look fine," Jessica agreed. "I think the fact your thighs are so muscular is what really sets them off, to be honest. If you had skinny girl legs you'd look like Mateo, like you're just playing at being fierce. But because you've got Alpha legs, the boots look more like body armor than a fashion statement."

The fact that Crowley swiftly emerged clutching two thick leather Bicep bands in black patent leather to match the boots seemed to confirm her statement, particularly as one of them was fashioned to hold a small silver blade. "You should wear this one with the knife on your right arm and then wear your ceremonial knife on the left of your harness," Crowley stated. "That way they look more serious since you could easily access both simultaneously. Though, I'm sure your reputation already proceeds you that you don't wear a knife just for effect."

Jessica snapped her fingers. "That's what this cloak needs. Black leather ties at the neck band."

An Esne flowed into view, his fingers moving rapidly.

Dean frowned with concentration, then nodded. "Of course," he agreed. "I'm always available at the Queen's pleasure."

"When did you get so formal?" Crowley snickered.

"The Esne like it," Dean mumbled. "They like to imagine I know how to behave properly."

"It's their job to please you, not yours to please them," Crowley pointed out.

Dean shrugged self-depreciatingly. "It seems only polite to play along. After all they have dedicated their lives to me. I don't want them to regret the decision because they think I'm an ill-educated, badly mannered yob."

However, proving bad manners were universal, "You BITCH!" Mateo howled. "You're seven feet tall. I swear I will hate you for all eternity."

Dean chuckled as the fiery little queen marched into the room, spitting with fury at the sight of him wearing the 'forbidden' boots, with a peculiar entourage trailing behind him.

"I imagine I'm only about six and a half feet in these," he said. "How tall is Michael, by the way?"

Mateo smirked. "Oooh, pretty tall for a Primá but still only maybe five eleven at the most," he admitted. "And he's nicely built but your biceps are probably wider than his thighs. I think he's going to be thoroughly intimidated by you."

"Good," Dean grinned. "I hate to buy into your drama by asking the question, Mateo, but why are you dragging a naked, weeping Alpha around on his hands and knees by a choke chain? Isn't that more Joshua's cup of tea?"

"Oh, this thing?" Mateo demanded, with a sneer in the direction of the Alpha. The Alpha, who looked no more than a teenager to Dean, cringed and whimpered, tears dripping down his cheeks in a steady flow. "I'm thinking of taking it to the level eight barracks where it might learn there are worst fates in the world than being a First Alpha. Introduce yourself to the Domina."

"My name's 'Bad Puppy'," the Alpha snivelled unhappily.

"And what happens to bad puppies?" Mateo asked.

"They get given away," the Alpha muttered brokenly, but his eyes looked far too bright with excitement for his tears to seem totally genuine.

Dean rolled his eyes at the dramatic little Queen. "What's his name really?"

Mateo sat down on the sofa with a flounce. "Oh, he's called Cody. He hit eighteen, came over the confederacy border last month and hitch-hiked all the way to Philadelphia to join our Pack. Raphael was just going to put him into the barracks as usual, but he was such a sweet, innocent looking thing that I decided I wanted him for myself. And his strapping farmer muscles didn't hurt the eyes. So I had Raphael bend him over in the pack hall then and there. Cody's tight little virgin ass was initiated by Raphael himself."

"Owch," Crowley sympathised, "That would make anyone's eyes water."

"Well, he certainly couldn't walk for a couple of weeks but he definitely seemed to enjoy the experience. Then when I finally got hold of him myself, it turned out it wasn't just Cody's ass that was virginal," Mateo continued. "At least, not unless you count bestiality. He's a little Nebraskan farmer boy and spent most of his rutrage years locked up in his Sire's cow shed to protect his sisters. Turns out though, that it wasn't his sisters that were in danger, was it, Bad Puppy?"

"No, my Queen," Cody whispered.

"Huh?" Dean asked.

"He's not only gay, but is pretty much exclusively a bottom," Mateo announced, his voice dripping with disgust. "Such a waste of such a pretty cock, don't you think?"

Dean bit his lip uncertainly. "I didn't realise the packs were homophobic," he said, cautiously.

Crowley laughed. "We're not homophobic in the slightest. The Queen is just being a disappointed little bitch," he said.

"I may just have to spank you myself, Cowbell," Mateo snapped. Then he smiled conspiratorially at Dean. "He's right, though. I'm just being all sore and disappointed. Poor Cody didn't even know he had no interest in using his cock at all until he was faced with my magnificence and still couldn't get it up. Trust me, I do not take that type of rejection well."

"I don't imagine you do," Dean chuckled.

"So I can't let Raphael keep him as a First Alpha, under the circumstances, and I really don't want to put him in the general Alpha barracks because I think they'd eat him alive. I'm not sure he'd actually object since he seems to have taken to being fucked with considerable enthusiasm but l'd rather not have his greedy little ass distracting all the other Alphas from their duties."

"He is very pretty," Dean agreed. "I can imagine him being rather popular."

"Exactly. So I called Chuck and asked him whether the parchment he found said Queen's Alphas could have second Alphas and he said, I quote, 'it can say whatever you need it to say.' Which at least answers the question of whether Chuck made the whole thing up, doesn't it? Anyway, I thought maybe you'd take him off my hands, Dean. He'll look so pretty kneeling at your feet in the Main Hall with your other pets and he can keep Crowley's bed warm for him at night. Two happy Alphas in your household and a nice little fashion accessory for yourself. What's not to like? Plus, turn around, bad puppy, and show the Domina your ass."

Cody swivelled around to reveal hot, swollen red buttocks that had clear paddle marks etched into the flesh.

"Unlike Crowley, Cody has absolutely no false body modesty," Mateo announced. "I think you should keep him nicely naked for your meeting with Michael, have him kneel at an angle to show his disciplined ass. Make a point of showing Michael you keep your Alphas firmly under your command."

Dean frowned. "I hope you didn't give Cody a spanking just to improve my bad-ass image this afternoon," he said, repressively.

Mateo tossed his head and laughed. "I probably would have, but that isn't what the bad little puppy earned a paddling for, was it, Cody?"

"No, my Queen," Cody admitted, his cheeks flushing as scarlet as his buttocks.

"Tell the Domina what you said to me when I asked you whether you found any Omegares attractive at all?"

Cody cringed lower, but whispered, "That I thought the Domina was the sexiest person I'd ever seen."

"You see?" Mateo stated. "Was I really going to let an insult like that to myself go unaddressed?"

"It was decidedly a less than tactful thing for him to say," Dean agreed, shaking his head at Cody's stupidity at saying such a thing to Mateo's face.

"Still," Mateo shrugged, "Raphael has an honesty geis in place today because of Michael's visit, so I don't suppose Cody was capable of even a polite lie if he'd tried. Even so, a spanking was called for to address the insult and, bearing in mind the geis, why don't you ask him how he feels about being disciplined?"

Dean shrugged, he'd spent enough time with Crowley to understand that the young Alpha's appearance of tearful distress was more than likely to be an illusion. "Did you mind being spanked by Mateo, Cody?" he asked.

The young Alpha raised his face, his huge brown eyes still spilling tears of apparent misery, "I've never felt so turned on in my life," he admitted quietly. "I came so hard it really hurt my balls."

Dean shook his head in disbelief. "I swear ALL Alphas are sick, sick men," he sighed.

"So you'll take him?" Mateo asked.

"Crowley?" Dean asked, offering the final decision to his Alpha.

Crowley smirked. "We'll take him. The Domina's household has room for another 'pet'."

"Thought you might," Mateo chuckled.

"I hope I'm doing the right thing," Dean muttered, as Crowley tugged the younger Alpha out of the room for a tour of the apartment. "Something tells me that 'tour' is going to start and end in Crowley's bedroom."

"Seriously, it will be good for both of them," Mateo assured him. "Cody is proving to be an enthusiastic little cock slut to a level that actually concerns me. I'm all for a free and easy attitude to sex but I think he's far too young and naive to really know what he's doing in the Pack. I know Crowley can be trusted to treat him right but I would have worried about Cody in the barracks. Don't you dare repeat that I said that. I have an image to uphold."

"Your image is safe with me," Dean promised.

"I still hate you," Mateo added.

"Noted," Dean laughed.

"I bet you can't even walk in those heels," Mateo sniffed.

"I admit it's going to be a challenge," Dean admitted.

"Serves you right."

Dean just shrugged.

"Still, I can't wait to see the look on Michael's face," Mateo admitted. "He's usually such an uptight bore that it will be fun to see him trying to woo you."

"The more I hear about him, the more I get the impression I won't like him."

"He's got money, power, a pretty face and a big dick. What's not to like?"

Dean laughed. "Funnily enough, that's what Crowley said. Speaking of which, Jess, would you please go ask Crowley to stop _playing_ with Cody. We need to get moving. I want to be fully settled in the Main Hall before Michael arrives and, in these boots, I hardly want to try getting there in a hurry."

~~

The moment his driver opened the car door, Michael knew he was in trouble.

Even from several hundred yards and despite a number of closed doors between them, the honey sweet scent of Dean Winchester assailed him immediately, like the promise of a cool, refreshing drink to a man literally dying of thirst. He had known, obviously, that their scents were going to be compatible but there was a vast difference between knowing something intellectually and actually experiencing it physically.

Another man would possibly have retreated at that point and reconsidered his plan of attack.

Michael, however, had total confidence in his own will-power. For one thing, he knew the scent was _artificially_ attractive to him and so he was confident that knowing that truth would allow him to overcome the pressing urgency he was feeling in his groin as Dean's scent curled into his nostrils and urged him forwards with an unfamiliar hungry greed.

Secondly, he was absolutely positive that whatever he was feeling would be duplicated ten fold in the Omegá. If  he were feeling the lure of Dean's scent signature so strongly, then Dean must be feeling it too. He doubted he would make it halfway into the Hall before the Omegá came barrelling towards him from the other direction, begging for his attention.

So he made his way confidently towards the Main Hall, ignoring the way the scent was clogging his nostrils and thickening in the air around him like treacle. And when he paused at the outer door to adjust his clothes and straighten his shoulders against the increased assault he expected when he entered the actual room the Omegá was in, except for being vaguely disturbed that Dean was simply waiting for his arrival instead of charging into his arms, Michael Sethson was fully in control of himself.

In fact his main concern was whether he'd remember his carefully rehearsed speech to lure the Omegá into his grasp. Charm wasn't something he naturally was skilled at. Still, he doubted an unworldly seventeen year old pup was going to have the ability to tell the difference between sincerity and a pre-rehearsed speech anyway.

Which was why, in an action that almost precisely mirrored his nephew's entrance in Pierre, Michael firmed his shoulders and marched into the Philadelphia main hall and, except for his approach being more of a march than a prowl, also duplicated Castiel's achievement of managing to reach halfway to the Queens' thrones before slamming to a sudden, confused halt.

The action of Michael halting mid-step and then freezing was, in fact, such a moment of deja vu that Dean actually only rolled his eyes impatiently instead of reacting with offence.

"You..." Michael gasped, then trailed to a halt, his eyes almost bulging as he stared in complete, bewildered shock.

He literally didn't even notice Mateo or Raphael, or even, for that matter, any of the assembled Pack members.

Michael's eyes were locked inexorably on the tableau of the Domina.

Dean was sprawled almost indolently on his throne, his booted legs carelessly wide to reveal his mound, his body half draped in a dark rainbow of silk that did nothing to conceal his firm, oiled muscular frame that was variably bare or sheathed in leather bands, his harness not decorated with delicate chains but rather chunky titanium and ice blue jewels. At his waist and bicep, the hilts of knives clinked with dark, serious promise, their threat lessened only by the snarling, metal fangs of the huge cat that quivered on his right side, unleashed, its clear urge to leap forward and attack the approaching Primá restrained only by the light touch of Dean's fingers on the cat's neck.

On Dean's left, equally huge, a wolfhound slathered with equal hunger, its dark eyes shining with eagerness to leap and, again, it was restrained only by a single, finger stroking thoughtfully against the back of its head. A small, dark Alpha stood to the right and slightly behind Dean's shoulder, his stance less protective than simply watchful. The Alpha's expression was, if anything, simply sardonically amused, as though his true role was simply to bear witness to his barbaric queen's savagery and, perhaps, perform the necessary cleanup afterwards.

And that, Michael realised in that frozen moment of stunned awe, was the absolute truth.

He'd always believed an Omegá became a 'Queen' only when granted that privilege by the mating bite of a Primá. As though the status of the Queen depended purely and only on the favour and largess of the Primá who gifted that status with the offer of his bite. For Michael, who'd always truly believed in his own righteous adherence to the tenets of the Omadonna, the sudden realisation of his own hypocritical heresy was like a physical body blow.

Faced with Dean, an unmated Omegá who purely exuded power regardless of his lack of a mate, Michael's knees wobbled beneath him as his entire worldview teetered on the brink of self-imploding.

He swayed slightly, his eyes darting from the snarling beasts that flanked the Queen, their unleashed loyal obedience a primal, unmistakable acknowledgement of Dean's thrumming power, to the young naked Alpha kneeling in obeisance at Dean's feet, his quivering red buttocks thrust in Michael's direction as his lowered head was pressing urgent, worshipful kisses onto the Omegá's booted feet and his whole body seemed to be shivering in ecstasy at being accorded the privilege of being the only 'beast' actually chained and leashed by the Queen.

And it was then, in a moment replayed in his head a thousand times later, whilst still in control of the impulses surging through his groin from the sweet scent of the Omegá, that it was another sense, that of his vision, that accorded him a realisation so shattering that he almost cried out in shock.

Chuck was _wrong_. The whole goddamned plan was wrong. Not morally, for Michael was honestly incapable of recognising such a truth even when slapped in the face by it, but at a fundamental practical level.

Through no direct fault of their own, the Pack were effectively at ‘war’ with the Betas and Chuck’s plan, one that Michael had bought into completely for over two decades, was merely a plan of survival, not of victory. It assumed failure. It provided a way for the Packs to exist despite assumed inevitable defeat. It would allow them to close their borders and live in ‘peace’ but only as a pale echo of themselves. Able to breed without the assistance of the Betas, they would continue to survive in their isolated ‘reservations’ but they would just be an anachronistic curiosity, like an almost extinct species clinging on to some semblance of survival by eking out an existence in compounds that would be nothing more than large ‘cages’ in reality.

Chuck’s plan was nothing more than a way for a totally defeated people to survive to suffer the indignity of that defeat forever, Michael abruptly decided.

And the reason that realisation struck him so hard, so unavoidably, was that he could see, at first sight, that Dean was not destined to be the Queen of a cowardly loser, huddled in defeat of a war he hadn’t even tried to win. Dean, glorious, barbaric, Dean was clearly designed to be the Queen of a _Warlord_. No wonder Chuck had always wanted Dean destroyed and defeated before he even grew old enough to be presented as a potential bride. Chuck wanted the packs to just roll over and admit defeat, saving their lives perhaps but destroying any reason their lives would be worth living.

Michael had never previously seen any point in fighting the inevitable either. He’d always agreed with Chuck that survival was more important than the Packs retaining their ‘honour’ but losing their lives. It had seemed pointless to him to retain ‘pride’ but lose the war anyway. And losing had always seemed totally inevitable, given the vast numbers of the Betas. The sheer volume of the Betas had always seemed an impossible obstacle to overcome.

But, surely, there was a way to address that. Instead of creating tens of thousands of new Alphas to populate the Pack Lands, they should be creating hundreds of thousands to populate armies. Instead of razing one city, like Sioux Falls, they should be razing the whole goddamned continent. Homeless, starving, the Beta’s infrastructure and military abilities would collapse and they would swiftly be defeated as long as there were sufficient Alphas to protect the Pack Land borders from their desperate assaults.

And it would take a certain kind of Primá to lead that fight to the Betas, a Primá unafraid of battle, a Primá willing to accept there would be losses and sacrifices to be made to achieve that victory, a WarLord Primá with a WarQueen at his side.

A WarQueen like Dean Winchester.

Although all of that realisation and justification had shattered six decades of previous beliefs, it took mere seconds of real time for Michael to completely reverse his position.

Fuck Chuck, he decided.

Dean would be his _Bride_. And it had nothing to do with the scent pouring off him, the artificial lure of his True Mate pheromones. It was purely the vision Michael saw of himself in that moment, as _The Grandé Primá,_ leading an army of Alphas to victory, with Dean and his savage pets at his side, whilst the Betas sank to their knees before them both and offered worship.

And, it was in that newfound attitude of ‘fuck this shit, I’m taking over’ that Michael decided he didn’t even care whether Dean ‘chose’ him. It wasn’t going to be up for debate. Forget charm and flim-flam. He was done with begging, with apologising, with acting like a ‘loser’. Michael was going to be a War Lord, and they didn’t ‘ask’ their brides to choose them. They just took them.

With decades of experience of manipulating his pheromonal emissions in Conclaves, Michael took a deep breath and exuded a huge, invisible cloud of pheromones and aimed them directly at Dean so that they flew at him like a targeted arrow.

It took a second, then Michael saw the moment they hit the unsuspecting Omegá. He saw Dean jerk in shock, saw his eyes immediately dilate black, saw him pant and shake with the effects of an almost instantaneous orgasm.

And he stepped forward, a smile of victory playing on his lips, only to be immediately frozen once more by the loud growl of the Cougar and the sight of Dean’s expression changing from momentary ecstasy to unmistakeable fury.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” Dean said, his voice quiet but confident.

Michael frowned in confusion, unable to comprehend how the Omegá had so swiftly controlled his reaction. He sent another wave of pheromones, harder, faster, and Dean rocked backwards again but this time, instead of arching into orgasm, he simply smiled evilly at the Primá.

“So that’s how you want to play it?” he asked. “Okay. Let’s play.”

He adjusted himself on his throne, spreading his legs wider.

The wave of pheromones hit Michael like a wall. He literally staggered back two steps, then tripped and fell heavily on his ass. The pain of the impact was only slight but the embarrassment was far more injurious to his pride as the surrounding Pack Members chuckled at him.

He scrambled back to his feet, face dark with anger, only for a second wave of phereomones to strike.

Michael threw back his head and roared, his cock springing to attention so quickly that it literally ripped though the material of his pants and protruded, naked and dripping, like a sword pointing in Dean’s direction.

He looked down in horror, humiliated and exposed, feeling Dean’s allure curling like tendrils around him, dragging him forwards even as he struggled desperately to stand still.

Every instinct was telling him to race forward and literally throw himself on the Omegá, to seal their mating with his cock, rather than even just his bite, and that primal urge was so strong that literally the only thing preventing him from simply raping his way to victory was terror. Of the snarling big cat, of the growling hound, of the looming Alphas, of Raphael who looked ready to leap to Dean’s defence, of the surrounding pack who would almost certainly rip him limb from limb if he assaulted an Omegá in front of them.

And he realised why Castiel had turned and run away in Pierre.

He suddenly wanted nothing more than to run away himself.

But it was too late to even try to run.

His balls felt like they were going to explode. His cock was streaming precum and demanding it was buried inside Dean’s Flores. He didn’t even think allowing himself to erupt over the floor was going to satisfy the screaming need in his groin.

He’d never felt so helpless, so out of control, in his life.

He spun in panic, struggling desperately against Dean’s invisible but unbreakable grip, whimpering and sobbing his distress, uncaring almost of the now almost raucous laughter of all the Pack Members enjoying his undoing.

And he saw just one option, one escape from his agony, and totally uncaring of the consequences, of the humiliation that would follow, desiring only a way to quench the fire burning like lava through his groin, Michael threw himself forward, diving between the snapping jaws of the Cougar and the Hound, landing on his knees at the foot of Dean’s throne, and thrust his aching, burning cock like a sword between the hot swollen buttocks of Dean’s kneeling naked Alpha and, with a howl of relief, exploded inside him.

“Well,” Dean drawled, to Mateo after a brief moment of carefully concealed shock, “That was unexpected. I thought Canadians were supposed to be _polite_.”

Mateo’s mouth opened and closed silently for a moment, bewildered horror on his face, as he watched Michael shuddering to completion inside of Cody. He swallowed a couple of times, then managed to put his game face back on. “Well, perhaps this _is_ considered a polite greeting in Canadian Packs?” he suggested archly.

“Hmmm,” Dean huffed. “Well, that’s decided then. I’ll knock Canada off my personal bucket list. I don’t think poor Cody would like many more of those kinds of ‘handshakes’.”

He rose to his feet, Juliet and Buddy flowing to his sides. “I’m going to retire,” he announced regally.

He stepped away from the dias, then looked back over his shoulder at Crowley. “When _he_ finally finishes, perhaps you would rescue poor Cody and take him somewhere to be fumigated.”

Then he elegantly and carefully (since the heels were still proving a little problematic for him) strode off in the direction of the Queen’s floor.


	106. Chapter One Hundred & One

There were many adjectives that Castiel found appropriate to describe his wife.  ‘Excitable’ was not generally one of them.  So he was not only surprised but genuinely confused to enter his bedchamber and find her rolling about on his bed, squealing with laughter.

Well, it was not so much that she was rolling on the bed (since he frequently found her there with varying First Alphas in different state of undress) but it was the fact she was doing so totally alone (and fully dressed), which was particularly disconcerting.

“What are…” he began, only to be stopped by her raised hand as she shushed him urgently and gestured to the fact she was actually talking into a cell phone, although her long dark hair had concealed that fact until she specifically pointed it out to him.

“Noooo,” she said, into the handset.  “No… I don’t… I don’t even…. I can’t even imagine… Oh my god….”and she burst into hysterical laughter again.

Castiel frowned with confusion, but remained obediently silent and waited patiently as Meg continued to laughingly splutter furious denials of belief to whomever she was speaking to.

“Stop, STOP,” Meg yelled finally. “I’m going to pee my pants, Crowley. Stop making me laugh. Oh, God… Yeah… He’s here now.  I’m going to tell him. I’ll… I’ll call you back.”

“What’s happened?” he asked her, cocking his head in confusion when she opened her mouth to answer but instead just burst into such a bout of raucous laughter again that she gave herself hiccups.

She was still trying to catch her breath when Benny burst into the room.

“You’ll never believe what I just heard,” he said.  “Apparently, Michael Sethson went insane this afternoon and humped a dog in the middle of the Philadelphia pack hall.”

“WHAT?” Castiel howled.

Meg obviously would have immediately told her husband what had really happened, having heard it direct from Crowley rather than via the lightning fast but frequently unreliable jungle drums of Pack gossip, but she was too busy trying to stop herself literally pissing with laughter.

~~

“You do realise I’m a Grandé Alpha Primá with an entire vast empire to run?” Lucifer snarled. “I’m not at your beck and call.”

“And yet, here you are,” Chuck pointed out, with a serene smile.

Lucifer’s face twisted with annoyed recognition of the fact he had, indeed, come ‘running’ in answer to Chuck’s summons. Though, really, it had been the hunger to assuage his own curiosity that had been the driving force behind his decision to fly to America.

“So, tell me, Chuck, exactly how making my brother the laughing stock of the world has benefitted us? You do realise, despite his horror at what happened, Michael is now absolutely _obsessed_ with the idea of mating Dean. He's going to demand you hand over Adam for the Elk Island project."

"Adam isn't even an option," Chuck replied. "I have my own plans for Adam.  Besides, despite Michael's minor humiliation, the meeting went _exactly_ how I needed it to go."

"How can that have possibly achieved anything positive?" Lucifer demanded.

 “Come with me,” Chuck said, smiling enigmatically. “I want to show you something.”

 He led Lucifer down the corridor of the Queen’s Floor into a different apartment that had most of its internal walls removed to create one huge cavernous open-plan room which was totally vacant save for several ceiling height ladders and dozens of pallet boxes filled with spools of thread. 

 A single vast tapestry covered the four walls of the room, and although every part of the tapestry had been worked upon, there were many sections of bare patches and loose threads, as though it were still being perfected in multiple places at once.

 "I don't get it," Lucifer said, looking at the vast tapestry with its thousands of entwining multi-coloured threads. "It just looks like a big mess of colour to me. Is this modern art? Isn't a tapestry supposed to show a picture or something?"

 "It's not _a_ picture. It's _the_ picture. This is the story of _everything_ ," Chuck replied portentously.

 Lucifer sniffed dubiously. "If you say so," he said.

 "You just need to know how to read the language of the threads," Chuck said, running his fingers lovingly over the fabric.  "It's my way of keeping everything clear, because it can sometimes get a bit muddled trying to simply keep it all in my head. Laying it out like this helps me to unravel all the knots in my thoughts, so to speak."

 "You mean this represents your _organised_ thoughts? You’re saying it’s even more of a mess inside your head?" Lucifer asked, looking vaguely horrified.

 Chuck just chuckled softly.  "I'll show you how it works," he offered. "Let me tell you just one of the stories this tapestry tells. See this particular rich chocolate brown thread? This represents Ophriel, Primá of South Dakota, the mate of an Omegá named Daniel."

 "I know only too well who _Daniel_ is," Lucifer said dryly.

 "Well, _this_ pretty metallic green thread is Daniel's tale. See how it merges with Ophriel’s thread just _here_ , at this particular part of the story.  This is the point at which Daniel allowed Ophriel to claim him as his Bride. He immediately proceeded to throw out pup after pup after pup.  Sixteen fine pups, fourteen of them Primáres, see how they all have their own threads? And they merge with Daniel and Ophriel’s for a time, then veer off to tell their own stories. 

 “Then see this long fine line of only green and brown? This represents how Daniel's womb ran dry.  Two whole decades passed with no further pregnancies and then, one day, a trusted Beta advisor of Ophriel's made the suggestion to his Primá that he should put his barren Bride aside and seek a new mate.  You know only too well how _that_ particular conversation goes, don’t you, Lucifer?

 "But fortunately, unlike you, Ophriel did not take kindly to the _helpful_ suggestion. His response was, in fact, to have the Beta hung upside down outside of the Pack Hall and flogged until his skin peeled off for speaking such a gross insult of Ophriel's beloved Daniel.

 “And, peculiarly, two months later it became obvious that Daniel was unexpectedly and perhaps _miraculously_ in pup once more.  It seemed to the thrilled couple that perhaps the goddess himself had blessed them with the miracle of a new pup as a reward for Ophriel's devotion to his Bride.

 "So Daniel bore one last pup after all. A final, seventeenth son, Elechiel. A Primá who was immediately the apple of Ophriel's eye. Though Ophriel loved all his pups, Elechiel, his unexpected son, was most obviously his favourite of all. And, because of that and, perhaps also, because Ophriel was finally free by that time of the massive debt he'd incurred in borrowing the money to pay Daniel's Bride price; when the time came for Elechiel to find a Bride, Ophriel was determined to hunt far and wide for a perfect Omegá for his son with cost not even a factor.

 "And now I draw your attention to this bronze gold thread. See how it weaves into the fabric, joining at this precise point?  This thread is that of Elechiel's bride, David.  Beautiful young David who was one of the last ever virgin American Omegáres to be sold directly to a Pack by his Beta family rather than suffering the indignity of being auctioned like an animal. 

 "David who was never hunted for like a precious jewel, after all, but, instead, simply arrived, unexpectedly, like a divine gift on _precisely_ the day before Ophriel was scheduled to leave for Europe in hunt of his youngest son's prospective Bride. A co-incidence? Or perhaps you may believe it was intervention of a more deific kind.

 "Either way, Elechiel mated David and so their combined thread weaves forwards, joined by new threads as, one by one, David whelps pups who are, beyond doubt, Daniel's most favoured of his many grand-pups. And since you undoubtedly already know how...maternal...Daniel is, even towards an unrelated Omegá like Dean, you can perhaps at least imagine how passionately protective he is of all of his grandpups. Yet it cannot be argued that a very _special_ place is in his heart for those of David's blood.

 "And one of those pups, Ramiel, left America after failing to secure Joshua as his bride, and moved to Eiré, where he deposed the Grandé and subsequently formed an alliance with the King of Norway, your brother Gabriel, thus strengthening Gabriel's position considerably and returning Pack values to the land of Eiré, the original birthplace of the Holy Order of Esne. And thusly, those of David's blood are held in a special place of devotion by the Esne who play the servant yet are in a unique position of potential influence in every Pack Hall."

 "As fascinating as this soap opera is," Lucifer drawled. "Are you going to reach a point any time soon?"

 Chuck raised his hand and traced where a new thread entered the tapestry and wove downwards to run parallel with David's.  "This is David's niece, Kate, who _peculiarly_ also whelped an Omegá a decade ago. A very _special_ little Omegá."

 He paused so significantly that it was obvious he was expecting Lucifer to make a connection.

 "Fuck me," Lucifer said, after thinking furiously for a few moments. "You're telling me Elechiel is mated to David _Milligan_!"

 "And that, my friend, is why it is important that you remember that whilst I might refer to him as Adam _Winchester_ , Dean's little brother is actually Adam _Milligan_. Trust me, it would not be advisable, given how events will play out, to treat Adam as simply a disposable spare part. Adam is not only important because of his Winchester genes. Politically, he also has considerable value because of his Milligan genes. It is Adam's blood ties to David that will accord him a particular unique value as this particular game progresses.

 “So that, perhaps, is answer enough of why Adam is being kept pure and untouched, to mate as a perfect virgin bride. His value as a Winchester is huge, but his value as a Milligan is _immeasurable_ because of the Esne. But that is a story to be told at another time.

 “Besides, there is a totally _different_ explanation of why Adam is not interchangeable with Dean. Just as Adam is both a Winchester and a Milligan, Dean is not _only_ the pup of John Winchester. His genetic heritage comes also from his mother, Mary. It is far too easy, given the huge significance of Dean and Sam's Winchester blood, to forget that both are also, equally, scions of the Campbell line.”

 “What the fuck’s important about the Campbells?  I’ve never heard of them,” Lucifer protested.

 Chuck shrugged.  “Wheels within wheels, Lucifer.  Sometimes what makes a blood line important is not the sum of its history but in its ability to influence the future.

 "See here? This part of the tapestry is the story of the Campbell family.  This thread here is of that mad, Ablest, bigot who sired Mary Campbell. But you could choose to consider _why_ Samuel Campbell was a bigot. What was Samuel's deepest, darkest secret? What drove a man like that to his passionate hatred of all designations other than Betas?  So trace his thread backwards and side wards, and we find his younger brother, Nathan. 

 “Nathan Campbell, an Alpha, who cruelly and carelessly disinherited his older brother and cast him out of the family business altogether. So Samuel, who had never learned any trade other than to manage the farm which he'd always believed would be _his_ to inherit, became eventually the preacher of an Ablest ministry.

 "And both of us know how crucial Samuel's role was in how Mary raised Dean. Samuel's behaviour and attitudes, whilst vile, were 'necessary' evils. Had Mary not been so attuned to the dangers of the Ablests to an Omegá pup, perhaps she would not have raised Dean to be so unique.

 “So perhaps the birth of Nathan was not merely happenstance and it perhaps behooves us to look more closely at his descendants. 

 “Nathan married a Beta, Corinne, who bore two Beta pups, Kyle and Karen. Kyle inherited Nathan's farm and married a wife who bore five pups, four Beta daughters and one Alpha son.  Karen mated less well, marrying a man who became an abusive drunkard. She bore only one Beta daughter before passing over the veil, leaving that daughter to be raised by a man who could not even have been trusted with a pet dog, let alone a beautiful young girl.  Fortunately, Karen's daughter inherited the Campbell spirit, if not the Campbell name, and ran away from home, choosing to take her chances in the world alone rather than be whored out by her father to fund his alcoholism."

 Lucifer's jaw dropped, his eyes widening in comprehension of the multitudes of meanings explained within the vast knot of closely interwoven threads.

 "You're saying that Karen Campbell was the mother of Megan Masters, aren't you?  Castiel's wife, Meg is Dean's _cousin_."

 Chuck smiled enigmatically.  "And?" he prompted.

 Lucifer rubbed his forehead fretfully.  "The Alpha, Nathan's Grandpup, that's Cody.  Cody is Cody _Campbell_.  So Cody shares the Campbell DNA with Dean and, presumably, has at least a certain degree of scent signature match to Dean. Which you _knew_ when you sent Michael into Philadelphia. You already knew Michael would completely lose control of himself in Dean’s presence. And…and what happened with the ‘convenient’ Alpha wasn’t any co-incidence at all.

 “Cody wasn't just the nearest, most available 'hole'. At some instinctive level, driven crazy by Dean's signature, Michael would have unconsciously been drawn towards the Alpha, because Cody would have been emitting a sufficient amount of Dean’s alluring signature to make _him_ the obvious recipient of Michael's cock.  You _knew_ Michael would lose control and, somehow, you set it up so there would be no possibility of him actually raping Dean."

 "Well, actually, _that_ was never even a possibility," Chuck corrected. "He would have been dead on the floor with Dean's knife buried in his brain and Dean's pets using his corpse as a chew toy, without Cody there to ‘save’ him. I was interested in saving 'Michael'. Dean didn’t need saving. But Michael still has an important role to play in this story, so I couldn’t afford for him to become collateral damage."

Lucifer shook his head slowly. “Okay, time to put your cards on the table, Chuck. I never doubted you were playing Michael, but I want to know what this is all about if you never had any intention of letting Michael get hold of Dean’s eggs. What’s the fucking point of anything we’ve done if we can’t get those Omegáres impregnated?”

“You still can,” Chuck said. “You just have to approach the problem in a slightly different way. I needed Michael to change his view of Dean. Stop seeing him as a _thing_ to be used and instead see him as a prize to be won for himself at all costs.”

“Well, you’ve done that,” Lucifer agreed. “Michael is bouncing between wanting to kill himself over his personal humiliation and declaring open war on the Confederacy to simply snatch Dean for his Bride.”

“Which is ridiculous,” Chuck pointed out, “because Michael, as a Primá, might be able to _rape_ Dean, but he can’t actually enforce a mating bond on him. For a bond to form there has to be _consent_.  Certainly it can be a tricked or _coerced_ consent, but Dean is not of a nature to be intimidated by threats nor lured by promises of worldy goods. Michael could forcibly physically mount him, perhaps, but he wouldn’t ever manage to _mate_ Dean against his will.”

“Which is probably the only reason the Canadian military aren’t already camping on the Confederacy borders,” Lucifer agreed.

“Still,” Chuck continued, smiling with considerable satisfaction, “the fact that Michael _wants_ to do it, means he’ll agree to the next part of the plan. It’s his only possible option if there’s ever going to be _any_ chance of him ever bonding with Dean.”

Lucifer listened with astonishment to what Chuck told him next, then shook his head with disbelief. “You’re absolutely insane,” he said. “It’s fucking _obvious_ which decision Dean will make under those circumstances. The whole idea is pointless.”

Chuck’s eyes flared gold. “I assure you nothing is _fucking obvious_.”

Lucifer cringed and apologised.

The gold glow faded and it was Chuck who said, “All you have to do is make sure Alastair convinces Michael the idea has legs.”

Too cowed by the Omadonna’s direct interference to argue further, Lucifer just said, “And you’re absolutely positive the information you’ve given me is correct?”

For the first time, Chuck looked a little lost. “In telling you what I just did, I just betrayed not only Dean but my entire designation, Lucifer.  I did not do so lightly and I shall not rest easily ever after for having done so.  I often dreamt that when this moment came, I would find the strength to refuse to do this to Dean.”

“And yet, you did not,” Lucifer pointed out.

Chuck shrugged. “I finally realised I had simply always doubted _anyone_ would be strong enough to pass such a terrible test, Lucifer. The fact I have betrayed him like this is testament, at least, that I now truly believe Dean will somehow find a way to pass _any_ test. So I will let the Omadonna’s will be done.”

~~

In the wake of Michael's visit, Dean's only 'public' reaction to what had happened was announce he was point blank refusing visits from _any_ Primáres.

So, despite the almost embarrassing number of flowers and gifts that flowed in his direction from Canada (in apology) and from Detroit (in hopeful commiseration), Dean decided that Jessica's idea of going travelling was probably his best next step.

He just wanted to get away completely from _both_ of his suitors for a while.

Which was why he immediately broke his 'no Primá' rule when the Esne announced a totally unexpected visitor.

Gabriel Sethson was not only a happily mated Primá but was the 'King' of Norway.  He certainly seemed to offer an interesting prospect of different possibilities.  Perhaps Norway really _was_ going to be a good option for him, and meeting the King of Norway consequently seemed a good idea before deciding one way or the other.

Though Gabriel was certainly nothing like Dean expected him to be.

The Beta-sized man with golden eyes who bounced into Dean's parlour not only looked nothing like a Primá but it seemed absolutely impossible to equate his irreverent, grinning expression with the dour demeanor of all the other Adam Primáres.

Gabriel jogged into the room, rather than marching or prowling, and, though he stopped in confusion at the sight of Dean, his attitude was certainly not one of awe but more of a conspiratorial amusement.

“No-one told me you were an actual _Giant_ ,” he blurted rudely. “If I’d realised America was starting to super-size its Omegáres as well as its fries, I would have visited sooner.”

Dean did a slight double take, raised an eyebrow, pointedly looked up and down the length of Gabriel’s body, then coolly said, “Funnily enough, no one told me Primáres were available in miniature Happy Meal versions, either.”

“Owch,” Gabriel said, clutching at his heart dramatically. “You wound me to the quick. You have a cruel, cruel tongue. I thought you’d unmanned my big brother with your beauty alone, but now I suspect your sharp rapier wit aided his fall from grace into the dark pit of terrible despair.”

“He didn’t fall,” Dean countered. “He jumped headfirst, propelled by his pride, although the rapidity of his sudden descent was undoubtedly aided by the collapse of his over-inflated ego.”

Gabriel chuckled and nodded in the direction of Juliet. “So is this the pooch that got screwed?”

Dean shook his head despairingly.  “I can’t believe that rumour has made it all the way to damned Norway,” he sighed. “Trust me, Michael may have done several unforgivable things but he did not hump my hound. He might have been rude enough to dump his load in my Second Alpha but he did not mount Juliet.” He gently caressed the Wolfhound’s head. “If he ‘had’ attempted to do so, I would have personally docked him with my knife,” he announced with calm sincerity. “So since your brother still has his cock and balls attached, you can take it as read that the rumour is a false one.”

“Oooh,” Gabriel sighed, with a deliberately dramatic shiver.  “That kind of dirty talk really turns me on, Domina. If I weren’t already a mated man, I think I might come over all unnecessary.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Dean spat.  “You’re supposed to be the goddamned KING of Norway, not a Court Jester. Can you at least pretend to have a bit of decorum before my Esne decide to throw you headfirst back out of my apartment?”

Gabriel looked around himself and startled. Several Esne had, indeed, appeared as though out of nowhere and were glowering threateningly at the small Primá. Two were even playing, idly, with the knives hanging around their necks.

He raised his hands in a gesture of peace, backing away from them and seating himself on one of the Parlour chairs.  He tapped his hands on his lap for a few moments, clearly struggling with either sitting still or keeping quiet, then gave up trying and sprang back to his feet again.

“Look, I can’t help it,” he told Dean. “You’re the most exciting thing that’s happened in decades, Dean. In just a few weeks you’ve blasted into Pack Land and turned the whole place on its head. You’ve got my straightlaced nephew, Castiel, running around like a big, broken-hearted puppy dog so desperate for a kind word from you that the whole Midwest could explode and he wouldn’t even notice.  My uptight brother Michael who somehow spent six decades convincing people he was so perfect he didn’t even break wind is now destined to go down in history as a hound-humping pervert.  

“And I couldn’t even get on a plane to come visit you without being handed a shopping list the size of a testament, with instructions to buy every goddamned Omegáre in Norway a pair of thigh-length Louboutin Boots and matching harnesses with Ceremonial Knife blades.  They’ve even added a request for me to track down litters of Wolfhound pups and Mountain Lion cubs. Every damned one of them wants to be YOU.” He shook his head despairingly. “My own Bride has told me not to even bother getting on a plane home again unless I also manage to convince you to donate some of your exclusive silk for his new ‘WarQueen’ tribute outfit. I might never get laid again, and it’s all your fault.”

 


	107. Chapter One Hundred & Two

"I've been thinking about it, Meg, and it makes no sense," Castiel announced, as he walked into the parlour of his apartment, only to stop in confusion at the sight of the small red headed girl playing tonsil hockey with Meg on the couch nearest the fireplace. "Um... hello?"

His wife took the time to finish her thorough exploration of the other girl's mouth before turning and smirking in his direction.

"This gorgeous creature is Charlie. Dean's friend."

"Best friend," Charlie quickly corrected.

"I know who you are," Castiel replied. "I simply have no idea what you're doing in my apartment."

"I would have thought it was self-evident what she's doing here," Meg retorted, with an unrepentant grin, "but if you really are that naive, just hang around a bit whilst I move this into the bedroom and you'll be able to witness it first hand. I have this intense need to discover whether this glorious red hair is truly natural."

"As attractive as that offer sounds, I meant I believed Charlie was already away attending Beta college."

"I was. I left. It was a complete waste of time," Charlie shrugged casually.

"Oh," Castiel said simply, trying not to be insensitive by asking for details. He needn't have worried though, as Charlie wasn't the type of girl who needed any encouragement to elucidate.

"I can't believe it costs so much money to go to college just to sit around and do nothing," Charlie explained. "I only had three actual lectures a week. Nine hours of total learning and half of that was wasted by idiots asking the lecturers stupid crappy questions when they could have looked the answers up for themselves. At the rate it was going, I would have been stuck there for years, decades even, going out of my head with boredom and I still would only have learned about Beta Law."

"I think the first year at college is always pretty much just an excuse to get away from home and party," Meg pointed out.

"Yeah, that's what I soon figured out and that's not cool," Charlie said. "I want to learn, not party. I don't have time to waste. So I spoke to Mr Crowley and he said maybe I should do it the way you did, Mr Cainson. Get intensively tutored by the Cain-Crowley lawyers in both Pack and Beta Law, then just take my bar exams for the Beta Courts. He said you did the whole lot in less than two years."

"I did," Castiel said. "But it was very hard work."

Charlie nodded solemnly. "I don't doubt it, but I'd rather do the work than sit around on my ass wasting time. The sooner I get qualified, the sooner I can help Dean."

"Help Dean how?" Castiel said, his expression confused. "Dean's safely inside the Packs now. What legal help could he possibly need?"

Charlie rolled her eyes impatiently. "The fact you can even ask that question with a straight face just goes to prove I'm right. I'm talking about the emancipation of Omegáres, Mr Cainson."

"Call me Castiel, and explain yourself," Castiel said, genuinely intrigued.

It was Meg who interrupted, saying, "I was asking Charlie what she thought Dean might like as his next Hope Gift, and she said his 'freedom'. We got quite deep into the discussion before I got completely distracted by her pretty smile."

"I don't understand. Dean isn't a prisoner," Castiel protested. "He's a greatly honoured Omegá who, even if he doesn't ever mate and take Queen status, will always have a place of complete respect within any Pack of his choice."

"Bollocks," Charlie said rudely. "He really can't see it, can he?" she asked Meg.

Meg shook her head sadly. "None of them can. Definitely not the Pack born ones, anyway."

"Can't see what?" Castiel demanded.

"That you aren't treating Dean or any other Omegá with 'honour'. You're treating them like spoilt pets," Charlie stated. "Look, I really understand you don't mean to, so I'm not picking a fight with you. But just because you don't realise you're doing it doesn't stop it being true.

"I understand why you send the Hope Gifts and it would be kind of sweet except for them being necessary in the first place. Poor Dean, like any Omegá in his situation, is apparently expected to live a certain way and dress to a certain standard, and play a role as some special 'royalty', except Dean doesn't even have a pot to piss in. He's completely reliant on gifts and favours. He has no money, no job, no independence. He just has to depend on the generosity of others and apparently hopefully mate well enough to find someone rich enough to keep him in the lifestyle he is expected to maintain for the benefit of Pack sensibilities. And all the while he doesn't even have a penny of his own to spend, does he?"

"Queens don't need actual money," Castiel said. "It would be seen as being in exceedingly bad taste for anyone to expect to be given monetary reward directly from a Queen. Any item or service is gifted to a Queen and any necessary financial compensation is done privately, behind the scenes, for the sake of decorum. Besides, it's also practically unnecessary for Queens to have personal cash since everything a Queen could ever dream of wanting or needing is provided for them without concern for material cost. Any Pack would willingly starve if they needed to do so to ensure their Queen receives everything he requires."

"I get that you don't want your Queens dressed in sackcloth and ashes," Charlie replied dismissively, "but I once knew a woman who used to dress her dog up and paint its claws to match its outfit of the day. I'm sure that little dog, given control of its own finances, wouldn't have actually chosen to have a wardrobe full of pink tutus. The whole argument that Omegáres are honoured because they have pretty things to wear is bogus unless they actually buy those things for themselves."

Castiel's mouth dropped open in surprise. "You, um, think my next Hope Gift to Dean should be cash? So he can buy whatever he wants himself? I...um... I suppose I could do that, though it might cause a scandal. I'm not even sure anyone would even accept money off him directly, for fear of offending, so a lot of tradesmen might swiftly go out of business."

Charlie sighed and shook her head. "You're still not really getting it, Castiel. Yes, I think a gift of money would be better if that's the best you can do, because that would at least give him an illusion of independence, even if he needs to use a third party to actually spend it, but it still smacks of condescension to me. That's kind of like giving a pup 'pocket money', isn't it? Sure, you'd probably go over the top and give him more money than I can even dream exists, but the principle is still the same, isn't it?"

"Charlie's right," Meg said. "Because when you look at the way the Packs are structured, all the wealth is physically held by Primáres. How is that fair? Omegáres are supposed to be the Most High and yet it's the Primáres who own everything. The Primáres' wealth is generated almost entirely from the tithes paid for use of land which may be referred to a Pack-owned but legally, as far as I can see, the Packs are not democratic in any respect. The Packs are benign dictatorships with all wealth belonging exclusively to the most senior member of that Pack. and whilst, in practice, that most senior Pack member is the Primá, theologically it is supposed to be the Omegá."

"Wealth does belong to the Queen ultimately, but is held in trust by the Primáres for the benefit of their Brides," Castiel explained. "It has always been so. No-one would argue against the fact that a Queen is the ultimate ruler of a Pack. Why do you think that Gabriel is the only Primá who self-styles as a King? In most Packs, in most countries, the reason only an Omegá is ever accorded a 'royal' title is a deliberate acknowledgment that the Omegáres are, ultimately, the Head of a Pack. Even Gabriel's title is accorded to him by the Norwegian people as a whole, rather than being an approved Pack-endorsed title. In fact, in the whole world the only society that accords its Grandé Alpha Primá with a Royal title that is supported within the Packs is China."

"But that's just sophistry," Charlie argued. "Saying something is so, doesn't make it true. An Omegá lives like a pampered pup when they first arrive at a Pack, then gets mated and becomes a pampered 'Bride', but never ever becomes treated like an actual adult, really. They're never given true possession of anything except whatever personal gifts they receive such as clothes and jewels and when they are put aside, like Lucifer's brides, they retain nothing except those trinkets and become fully dependent on Pack charity once more."

Castiel looked totally stunned as he absorbed the implications of her words. "I'd never seen it like that," he admitted. "But I guess you're right. The problem, I suppose, is that Omegáres are very rarely born into Packs. They arrive empty handed, as a rule, from Beta Land so naturally are dependent on being immediately gifted with what they require. Perhaps the act of that gifting, originally intended to simply be the handing over of an Omegá's own rightful possessions, has over time become perceived as the granting of a boon rather than a restoration.

"But it's not as though they can simply inherit wealth through direct succession the way that Primáres do. And, I suppose, since the Primáres are responsible for ensuring the survival of the Pack as a whole, they always retained management of the Privy purse to fairly distribute whatever surpluses existed after their Queen's needs had been addressed. Somewhere along the way, it does seem that the fact that the Privy purse actually belongs ultimately to the Queen has been forgotten. But, even so, the stability of the Packs definitely depends on that purse being held by the Primá for general dissemination."

"Well, actually, it's effectively held by the Primá's Beta Wife," Meg pointed out. "When was the last time you ever even looked at a bill, let alone paid it, CP? So from that point of view, neither the Omegá nor the Primá truly holds the purse strings of a Pack's finances. I am definitely the holder of the Privy Purse in our Pack and, although you have a lot of independent wealth, CP, that I don't have direct access to, I could, in theory, demand access to it if it was necessary for the benefit of the Pack."

"It's true," Castiel told Charlie. "Whatever you might imagine, it's Meg who wears the pants in this Pack Hall. Well, figuratively, since given the choice she rarely wears anything at all for longer than it takes her to trip someone into our bed."

"I'd noticed," Charlie agreed, with a laugh. "And I'm not suggesting that control of Pack finances should move away from the Beta Wives since they legitimately seem to be the only members of the royal households who have actual jobs to do rather than just roles to play. But instead of all this shit about Bride prices being paid to Beta relatives as dowries, wouldn't it be possible to have some kind of centralised Omegá fund? You treat the role of being a Queen as being a fixed, religiously dictated role that sets firm behavioural expectations upon an Omegá, so maybe the Omegá should receive a stipend in return for accepting that restrictive mantle, with a regular and generous allowance paid to them for their whole lives like a salary, so they become truly independent. It's no different to, say, how a minister of a church gets a stipend purely for playing a strictly dictated role."

"She's got a point," Meg said. "Even the Esne receive a stipend for their role as an Queens's servant, but the Queens themselves effectively live on charity."

"The Esne get paid?" Castiel asked with surprise. "By whom?"

"The Holy Order of Esne is funded primarily by donations from all of the Packs. We send a very generous annual tithe ourselves. You don't involve yourself in the day to day finances so probably never noticed," Meg said. "But the Esne who attend to the Queens are paid from that central fund. I understand it's just a nominal amount to cover day to day necessities. Still, every single penny they receive is a penny more than any Omegá ever receives directly."

"The Holy Order of Esne are the totally independent religious group dedicated purely to the service of Omegáres?" Charlie asked.

"That's right," Meg agreed.

"Then if you Primáres still want to prove you've got the biggest dicks by paying huge Bride Prices, maybe you should start paying the money to the Esne," Charlie suggested. "Because it seems to me _they_ might be the only truly independent people who can be trusted to use that money for the benefit of the actual Omegáres. And that raises another question too, doesn't it? If the Esne, who seem to be the only people actually vested in treating Omegáres right these days, only supply their members to Queens and yet have sent a full tything to Dean already, doesn't that suggest that the role of Queen has sod all to do with whether an Omegá is mated or not? Maybe you big-dicked Primáres need to stop thinking you're the big Dogs around here, able to 'grant' royalty to an Omegá. Maybe it's fuck all to do with any of you. The Esne certainly don't seem to believe it's within the gift of a Primá to 'make' an Omegá into a Queen. They seem perfectly satisfied that Dean is one already!"

"How old are you?" Castiel asked.

"Eighteen," Charlie answered, frowning with confusion at the question.

"Frightening," Castiel said.

"What do you mean by that?" she asked suspiciously.

Meg laughed. "I think CP is intimidated by your intelligence, Charlie. It's not often he comes across someone even smarter than himself. You have a unique ability to cut through the bullshit and see things more clearly than we do."

Charlie blushed. "I just don't think the way Omegáres are treated is any fairer in the Packs than it is in Beta Land. Sure you don't abuse them physically but you still demean them in your own way. Considering the entire Pack hierarchy would collapse without them, I don't think there's any excuse for how you treat them. You call them Queens but then behave like they're nothing more than brood mares for producing more Primáres. You pretend it would be okay if Dean didn't want a mate but his only option if he doesn't mate is to live as a penniless guest of a mated Omegá in some Primá's Pack Hall anyway. It's not even like he could go off and set up his own Pack Hall, is it? Why can't an Omegá run a Pack? Why does he have to have a Primá at all?"

"Pack Law doesn't allow for the establishment of a Pack Hall without a resident Primá," Castiel said firmly. "Primá pheromones are necessary for Pack cohesion and, even more significantly, without a Primá, young Alphas suffer rut rage. That's the problem with Free Beta society."

"Okay, I buy that," Charlie agreed. "Clearly there was at least some logical basis for setting up the Pack structure as it currently stands, but does it have to be so cut and dried? How about allowing for separate Queen Halls, but with the agreement that any pups of the residents that present as Alphas have to move to Primá run Pack Halls for their teenage years? As long as a spirit of co-operation existed between the Omegá Halls and the Primá Halls, it could work perfectly well. Or, alternatively, only allow Esne and Alphas and unmated Betas to serve in Queen Halls. If the Beta females working in the Queen Halls want to have pups, they need to resign their roles and move to Primá run Halls."

"You're working on the assumption that Omegáres would want to live apart from Primáres. I don't doubt one or two _might_ , but most definitely welcome the idea of mating almost immediately on arrival in Pack Land. Particularly those who arrive from Beta Land with their imperative to reproduce already kicked into high gear," Castiel said.

Meg nodded her agreement. "He's right, Charlie, sadly."

Charlie shrugged. "That's fine. Well, actually that's fucked up and not fine at all but I see what you're saying. But I'm not proposing the idea of _actually_ setting up Queen Halls, I'm talking about changing the law to allow for the _option_ of them. Letting an Omegá genuinely and truly have a position of complete autonomy. It doesn't actually matter whether Dean or any other Omegá ever actually takes advantage of the choice to live alone. What matters is that the choice should genuinely exist in the first place. Does that make sense?"

Castiel nodded. "It makes perfect sense," he agreed. "Without a choice, there _is_ no choice. An Omegá should have a genuine alternative offered, otherwise his decision to accept any mating bite becomes simply an act of necessity on his part. It may surprise you, Charlie, but the very reason I was still unmated when I met Dean was that I was always horrified by the idea some Omegá might choose me simply out of his own compulsion to reproduce. I find it equally repulsive that I might simply be seen as the best available option. I don't want to own Dean, Charlie. I don't want him to be my Queen simply because he sees me as the best of a bad lot. I want... well, I want him to love me," he blushed slightly at the admission.

"He's telling the truth," Meg agreed. "CP might be proving to be a blundering idiot in his attempts to woo Dean's affections, but he genuinely is driven by romantic idealism. It's sad but rather sweet."

Charlie grinned hugely. "So if I were you, rather than sending Dean any more flowers or clothes or fripperies, I would set him up his own bank account for starters and then sit my ass down and work out a way to gift him with a new Bill incorporated into Pack Law, gifting ALL Omegáres the right to be truly emancipated. You need to legally establish that a Queen is fully autonomous and that the Pack exist only to support his rule. That's what scripture states, isn't it? That the Omegáres are Most High. So it's time to stop just saying it and actually make it a legal reality."

"Do you have even the slightest idea how much legal groundwork I'd have to do to get something like that passed into Law?" Castiel asked.

"Well, I'm sure you'd need a really keen and willing paralegal to help you," Charlie agreed. "I bet that kind of scut work would teach me far more than any number of college lectures."

Castiel's eyes blazed with blue primal fire.

"Then let's get started," he said.

"Before you both bury yourself in legal crap," Meg said, "What did you actually come here to talk about, CP?"

Castiel frowned at her for a moment, then sighed. "Well, maybe it doesn't even matter now but I've been thinking about Michael and, the more I consider it, the less sense it makes. I'm not a scientist but I know that scent signatures are said to be formed at a genetic level. So I can see how Michael could share certain aspects of the same signature as myself, but I think it's a genetic impossibility for him to be a perfect 100% match.

"Even allowing for the fact that different genetic characteristics vary in the same bloodline, so theoretically Michael could be a closer biological match to me than my own brothers, I can't see in any way how he could be a perfectly identical match. For one thing, that would require not one single part of my genetic inheritance from my mother to be playing any part in my scent match to Dean."

Meg frowned thoughtfully. "Well, I know different characteristics can skip generations. You can be a throwback genetically to any ancestor. Like the fact your Uncle Gabriel is the only other Primá not to have brown eyes. There must be some trait that he has and that you share, due to some shared ancestor, yet that particular gene isn't switched on in your brothers."

Castiel nodded, "Yet Gabriel and I have absolutely no other matching physical characteristics. Even our eye colour is not only different from the norm but also different from each other. Which means that we share one characteristic to an extent but are highly unlikely to be anywhere close to each other overall. So whilst I accept I might somehow share far more genetic characteristics with Michael than with any other relative, I can't see how I can possibly share an absolutely identical scent signature."

"Well, it's inarguable that he did have a True Mate response to Dean," Meg said, with an equally puzzled shrug. "So maybe we just don't understand enough about how the signatures work. Maybe they aren't DNA driven at all. Maybe we just assume they are."

"Or maybe it's Dean?" Charlie suggested. "You know, like some people have a blood group that can be donated to anyone. Maybe Dean's a universal scent match."

"What do you mean?" Meg asked.

Charlie shrugged. "I dunno. I'm just stabbing in the dark here. Dean's only met two unmated Primáres, right? And both have immediately scented him as their True Mate, right? Well, what if Dean just smells so goddamned good that any unmated Primá will have the same reaction. I mean, I have no idea if it's possible. I'm just putting it out there."

The colour drained out of Castiel's face.

"Oh shit. What if you're right? Dean's supposed to be flying to Norway later this week with Gabriel. There are nearly a dozen unmated Primáres living in Gabriel's hall."

"Well, I think that's even less probable than Michael being your scent match," Meg said staunchly. "It would cause absolute chaos if it were true. I can just imagine the entirety of Norway erupting into civil war if Dean arrives there and every single one of Gabriel's unmated grandpups becomes convinced Dean is their own personal True Mate. The Pack Hall would become a bloodbath if they all launched into battle to win his hand."

"Well, as awful as that sounds, I still think it's possible," Charlie argued, "I personally always thought the matching signature was at least in part because of Dean and Castiel being cousins, but that can't be the case as Michael doesn't have any Winchester genes like Castiel. So I'm sticking to my theory of Dean simply being Primá catnip."

"What do you mean? Dean and I aren't cousins," Castiel said, frowning with confusion. "I don't have any Winchester genes."

"Oops," Charlie muttered.

Meg's eyes went huge. "Damn, I should have realised when you never mentioned it that you never did get around to reading the rest of Crowley's report. Obviously you never got to the part about Charles Winchester."

Castiel glowered at her. "Who the hell is Charles Winchester?"

"Oh, boy," Charlie muttered, and hunkered down to await the fireworks.


	108. Chapter One Hundred and Three aka 'Of Mateo and Men'.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have been dealing with an unexpected bereavement that has, naturally, captured most of my time and attention this week. It's been a difficult time personally for a number of reasons. I managed to find enough peace and quiet today to edit this section but because the funeral is tomorrow, it will probably be a few more days before I post the next chapter or find the opportunity to look at your comments or reply to them.
> 
> They are appreciated, though.
> 
> ~~~

To truly understand anyone, it is necessary to understand their origins. It is both in their genetics and their experiences that people's personalities are born, their behaviour variously developed as a consequence of inherited characteristics, learned behaviours and societal influences. The end result, whether the person rails against the system or conforms to expectations, still has its origins in the same places. Fate does not define the person you choose to be, but its significant effects on your personality certainly cannot be discounted.

The day before Dean Winchester was due to depart for Norway with Gabriel Sethson, a situation occurred which required Mateo Cainson, formerly a minor character within this tale, to make a decision so fundamentally important to Dean's future that it bears some scrutiny.  Certainly the events that followed may have taken a far different turn had Mateo failed to immediately confide in someone whom it might have seemed highly improbable to be the recipient of his trust.

To understand why Mateo made that decision, it is probably necessary to understand him a little more and to understand Mateo Cainson it is probably first necessary to understand Consuela del Torrero, his mother.

And, perhaps, before we can even attempt to understand Consuela, we should touch upon the unique history of the country that birthed her, España.

In many of the old European countries, although the unrestricted growth of the Beta population had led to the same high degree of Beta emancipation as in the Americas, with entire communities choosing to leave the direct influence of the Packs and live on tithed lands that developed their own common law, there was little appetite within the heart of those Betas for any conflict with the Packs themselves.

It was rare for Betas on the main European Continent to act in ways abhorrant to the Packs and, certainly, the spirit of co-operation between Beta Land and their Pack Land landlords was, on the whole, convivial. Whether their decision to remain closely aligned to almost all aspects of Pack Law was rooted in tradition or simply in fear of change, there is no doubting that the European Free Betas showed little desire to discard their religious beliefs even despite their decision to physically leave Pack Land and throw off the yoke of Primá compulsion.

And, despite that general European piety of behaviour, it must be acknowledged that in España the free Beta people were considerably more religiously inclined than most  
of their neighbours and tended towards a rather fundamental interpretation of the All-Father's doctrines.

The Españic Betas may have turned their backs on Pack Life, but they never turned their faces the slightest iota from the worship of their greatly adored Goddess. In every place the Betas lived, from the smallest Poble to the most populous of the Cities, there were chapels and churches dedicated to the Omadonna. Peculiarly, perhaps, the people of España never dedicated any of their places of worship to the All-Father himself, though they continued to follow his tenets to the letter. Multitudinous carved or cast icons of the Omadonna graced the entire country, but not one single icon of the All-Father was ever created. It was not his face that the Españic people offered worship to.

Neither was it his mercy that they prayed for.

To the Españic people, the All-Father was a cold, stern and unforgiving deity who should be respected and obeyed but preferably avoided at all costs. So it was the Omadonna, the mother goddess, the Holy Harlot who birthed the entire universe, who was perceived as the more approachable of the deific couple. The Omadonna was the merciful deity who would hopefully intercede on their behalf against the stern judgement of his mate.

So, thus it were the Omadonna's Holy Days, such as Shab-e Yalda, that were the times of greatest celebration, when the richly garbed, delicate, waxy-faced porcelain statues of the Goddess were paraded on thrones on top of lavishly decorated floats, that travelled in vast processions over petal strewn roads, and in any of the places where one of the mystical, rare creatures known as Omegáres were born, a new chapel was thrown up to mark the goddess-blessed spot for eternal celebration and worship.

In España to even express doubt over the sanctity of an Omegá was a capital offence.

So, on the surface, it might be supposed that being born an Omegá in España was a wonderful thing. And on a purely material level, that was certainly true. From the moment a midwife spotted the tell-tale signs indicating that a newborn pup would present as an Omegá, both that pup and his family were feted as Goddess-blessed.

From the day of his birth to the day he entered Pack Land in search of a mate, an Españic Omegá was treated like a living, fleshly icon of the Omadonna himself.

In any City lucky enough to home a resident Omegá, the ancient Omadonna icon would be lovingly swaddled in cloth and set away as no longer necessary. Then the Omegá himself would take its place in the processions of worship, riding the floats on a gold-gilt throne or seated on the altar of the local church for Lecheday services (for in España the day of worship and rest was Lecheday, not Alfarsday as in the Americas) to receive the worship and alms of the attendees.

It was, it must be stated, a somewhat lucrative situation for an Omegá (and his family) to be accorded such an exalted position. Perhaps it was in these old European traditions that the idea of Omegáres never working was born for, undoubtedly, in Countries such as España, after the birth of an Omegá it was unlikely anyone in his direct family would ever have to work again.

Between the generosity of Alms offered throughout the Omegá's puphood and the substantial Bride Price paid when he mated, no close relative of any Omegá ever hurt for money.

And the generosity of the Alms-giving was, in itself, an indication of how deeply the roots of religion ran in that country. There was not a person of any designation in España who did not believe that the fastest way to secure yourself a lucky mortal life,  
followed by a blessed personal heaven in the hereafter, was by gifting a tithe directly to a living embodiment of the Omadonna.

So much so that even though those same people also paid, of necessity, a tithe to the Packs and a tithe to their local Corregidor, ( who in acting as their landholder was the actual person responsible for paying the land tithe to the Packs but that pertinent fact was conveniently forgotten by the Corregidors) and consequently with the three tithes the average Free Beta lost over 30% of their income as quickly as they earned it, leading to an inarguably high level of poverty in the more rural communities of España, but not once did a single voice rise in protest against retaining the old ways.

Well, I should admit, the odd voice had risen on occasion but had been immediately silenced, permanently, by a populace who were perfectly happy with the way things were and were highly intolerant of change. The Españic people were totally resistant to any criticism of their religion and considered even the act of verbally questioning it to be heresy. The Españic Free Betas may have resented their position within the hierarchy of the Packs, but they never rejected the religion which had proscribed it.

So three hundred years before Mateo was born, when the first supporters of the Church of Abel sent representatives of their newfound ministries to Europe, they received a luke warm reception in most of Europe but a fiery reception in España.

Literally.

Every Ablest missionary who set foot in España was promptly burned as a heretic; and that was at least two centuries before the Ablest religion had even reached the particular edition of their Testament that threw the first doubt on the actual sanctity of Omegáres.

Having had several hundred missionaries burned, boiled, cooked or even melted from the inside by the forceful insertion of molten metal into various orifices, because the Españic people were remarkably inventive in the different ways a heretic might be killed by fire, The Church Of Abel had completely given up on converting España at least a century before Consuela del Torrero was even born.

The Del Torrero family were as close to nobility as any Free Beta could achieve in Europe. The Del Torrero had been Landholders, if not owners, of vast swathes of Beta Land for centuries. Miguel Del Torrero was the Corregidor of the Province of Cordoba, acting as the administrator and sole judiciary to the Free Beta people of that region, but his position, unlike that of a Mayor, was a hereditary one. The position of Corregidor provided a Beta with a position within Free Beta society not unlike that of a Primá although, without the benefit of pheromonal compulsion, the Corregidor's wielded their influence with a far stricter application of physical punishments and ruled through the fear of their people rather than chemically imposed communal adhesion.

In many ways, by discarding the shackles of the Packs the Betas had found themselves with considerably less personal freedoms despite naming themselves as 'Free'. Sadly, it seemed that in any society purportedly formed of equals, there would always be someone who wished to be more equal than the others. In Cordoba, the Del Torres family had achieved their ascendency with a heavy hand and had retained it by allying themselves with the other 'noble' families of España and forming a tight social network that had created the idea of Beta Superiosa, almost as though they styled themselves a separate and higher designation.

It might even be uncharitably argued that the reason the Ablests were despatched so brutally had less to do with their disrespect towards the Omadonna than their suggestion that all designations were equal. Certainly, the notion of all people being equal was not warmly welcomed by any of the Beta Corregidors whose wealth depended upon them maintaining a position of superiority.

Miguel was a proud man, for whom his lineage and image and reputation were of far more import than his own family. And that is why, when his daughter Consuela made the socially poisonous mistake of becoming pregnant by a man who did not offer her his hand in marriage, Miguel's primary concern was not for his daughter's distress but for the dishonour Consuela had brought upon the Del Torrero name.

His first reaction, naturally, was to attempt to force the Beta man who had despoiled his daughter into a shotgun marriage. Despite Miguel's power, wealth and influence, it proved impossible, since it soon became obvious that the naive Consuela had been seduced by a charming scoundrel who was already married. Furthermore, the caddish seducer already had several legitimate offspring from that wife meaning the marriage could not simply be annulled. Although Españic Common Law allowed for divorce, it did not permit the remarriage of divorcees.

Miguel settled for having the man castrated and then flogged to death as a 'rapist', though he never advised anyone of the identity of the supposed rape 'victim'. Not that it were necessary he should do so, anyway. Españic common law was not based upon the principle of trial by jury. Miguel's sole judgement as Corregidor was sufficient to condemn any man. It was a level of power so absolute that even the best of men might have been corrupted by it. And Miguel was certainly not a good man.

After dispatching the unborn pup's sire, Miguel decided the only option left to preserve his daughter's honour was for her to have a secret and illicit abortion.

It should be stated, at this point, that abortion was strictly forbidden in España but, naturally, that did not mean it never actually was performed. Consuela did not refuse her father's command because of any fear of legal repercussions. Miguel Del Torres was the Law in Corboda and there were none who would have dared criticise him even were the heinous act somehow made public. So Consuela knew it would be perfectly possible to 'lose' the evidence of her indiscretion but she found the idea to be personally obscene. The pup growing within her was not guilty of any wrongdoing and she refused to make it pay for her own lack of judgement.

When Consuela rejected the idea of 'murdering' her bastard child, regardless of her now quite understandable loathing of its duplicitous Sire, she was decried as a 'harlot' by Miguel and immediately banished from the family completely with nothing more than the clothes on her back.

Cast out of Cordoba, Consuela made her way northwards to the province of Navarre, travelling by the kindness of strangers, hoping that she might find employment and accomodation in the city of Pamplona. But for a young pregnant Beta girl with no particularly useful education and absolutely no work experience, employment was impossible to come by. It was thusly that Consuela, near starvation, was eventually taken in by the only people who took pity on her situation (rather than judging her harshly for the taboo of her illicit pregnancy) and so Miguel's daughter, raised as a noble woman, joined a house of 'ill-repute' in Pamplona and became a prostitute.

Which was, oddly, not a situation she found particularly onerous. Because the Free Betas of España co-operated with the Packs, the moment any of their sons presented as Alphas they were 'encouraged' to move directly into Pack Land. So the prostitutes in España did not service teen Alphas. They rarely even had adult Alphas in their clientele, particularly in a City as small as Pamplona, and Beta males as a whole had notoriously low sex drives and only attended prostitutes at all because their Beta Wives often had even less of an inclination to be sexually active than they did.

Furthermore, because prostitution was legal in España despite the social stigma  
accorded to the profession, the whores of Pamplona had no need of the services of pimps for protection. The brothels therefore were run as self-governing co-operatives with at most a senior female acting as Madam whose role was genuinely intended as more the role of Mother-superior than exploitative employer.

So Consuela had comfortable accomodations, a slow and steady number of Beta clients who asked little of her in return for their money (indeed she was often paid more for her time as a willing listener than a sexual partner) and a household full of Beta females who treated her as a valued 'equal' and were remarkably sympathetic to her situation and were, frankly, far more pleasant to live with than the straightlaced family she had left behind.

Consuela was not a naturally mild, meek, religious or pious woman. She had always found her relatives to be irritating and boring, anyway. The whores of Pamplona were women who laughed and partied and formed bonds of sisterhood with each other. They were, frankly, more pleasant companions than any Consuela had previously experienced and even as the newest, lowest member of the brothel, Consuela definitely felt she had found a true 'family'.

And when she gave birth to her pup, Mateo, Consuela immediately rocketed from lowest member of the brothel to Queen Bee.

In España, there was no question as to the holy status of Omagáres.

Consuela was so thrilled by the blessing of the Goddess that she took great pleasure in writing to her Sire and pointing out that he had not only been guilty of the sin of wishing to murder her unborn pup but that, had he done so, he would have been guilty of killing an Omegá.

Miguel Del Torrero was so horrified that he immediately threw out an offer that Consuela could return, with her pup, as the blessing of the Goddess was such that none would dare speak badly of her 'shame' in being without a husband. It may have also occured to him that having an Omegá grandpup would be extremely financially advantageous. He sent gifts of money and jewels and a phalanx of servants to escort her home.

She kept the cash and the jewellery and sent the servants back to her Sire with a message it would be a cold day in hell before she set foot in Cordoba again.

So Mateo grew up in a brothel in Pamplona.

You might expect that to have been a difficult life.

You would be wrong.

For Mateo, it was simply a life of living with two dozen women who all fought each other over who could become his favourite 'aunt'.

Like a tiny, perfect, china doll, he was indulged and cosseted by all the residents of the brothel. From the moment he was born, his affection was fought over as though it were a rare and valuable jewel and he was forever cosseted and spoilt as the women all strove to outdo each other in their efforts to shower him with hugs and kisses and gifts and attention. As a toddler, he could be found wandering around the rooms of the brothel, like a tiny fairytale princess, dressed in the finest silk embroidered dresses, with his jet black hair carefully curled into perfect ringlets and his bright emerald eyes almost too huge for his delicate heart-shaped face; looking as cute and improbable as an actual carved icon brought to life.

It was, perhaps, the particular tininess of Mateo that caused his celebrity to rapidly spread throughout Pamplona. From the first time he appeared as the 'living Omadonna' on one of the City's parade floats, replacing the previous icon with an even more delicate and ethereal countenance than that formed from the finest of porcelain, the rumour of a little Omadonna Enfanta was born.

As much as Mateo himself hated his small stature, for the local residents of his City it was considered an addition to his perfection. His petite body was also enthused upon greatly by the representatives of the official Pamplona Church. Possibly, admittedly, because it made Mateo the absolutely ideal size to wear all the jewel encrusted finery that had already been provided for the small carved icon he replaced, thus saving the local church funds a small fortune. The religious piety of the Padres did not prevent them applying economic logic to their provision of worship.

It did, however, cause them to question the nature of Mateo's accomodations. When Mateo was five, a delegation from the local church arrived to advise Consuela that it was totally inappropriate for the 'Omadonna Enfanta' to be raised inside a house of ill repute. Consuela heatedly advised them that if Mateo was truly to be the living respesentative of the Holy Harlot then being birthed by a whore seemed like the absolute perfect scenario and a brothel was, consequently, an ideal home for the tiny Omegá.

That was when, from watching his magnificent mother, with his huge green eyes wide with awe, Mateo first began to devise the 'persona' he would later adopt as a Queen.

Beautiful, fiery Consuela with her dark flashing eyes and sin-black hair, and a temper so huge it seemed almost to exist like a separate presence in a room.

Although Consuela did not think to deliberately teach Mateo to be fierce and independent himself because she simply could not see a time in his life when he wouldn't be treated as a precious, beautiful little perfect princess (and she could certainly not envisage an Omegá ever being cast out or chosing a life as a prostitute) still she inadvertantly taught him by example, at least, that all men crumbled before the onslaught of a beautiful woman's vicious tongue.

And so, Mateo reasoned, it would make sense also that people would give way to him if he learned to also portray himself as fiery of nature.

He was not wrong. If anything, he underestimated how much more effective it would be coming from an Omegá. Particularly, such a cute and tiny Omegá. And whilst he hated being small, he still loved the advantages his petite stature offered. Even the hardest hearted, sternest of men seemed to collapse to the 'cuteness' of Mateo stamping his feet in temper and making demands of them.

Even as a toddler, Mateo mastered the art of stamping his perfect little feet in fury and exploding into tempestuous rants whenever he perceived any lack of attention to his wishes.

And even as he grew and learned that being coy and coquettish was also an effective ability to add into his toolbox of manipulative behaviours, he never forgot that an explosion of near-irrational anger almost inevitably achieved his desired results even when asking sweetly had failed to obtain his objective.

But the temper, despite being perfectly executed, was rarely if ever genuine.

Mateo was, by natural inclination, a surprisingly kind and understanding pup who was capable of great empathy. He was in many ways quite docile in nature and without Consuela's influence would most probably have developed into a sweet and biddable adult. Despite enjoying the trappings and fripperies of his role as an Españic Omegá, Mateo was not driven by lust for material things. Indeed, perhaps because he had always had such things showered upon him with careless abandon, Mateo was largely indifferent to them. It wasn't a case of him taking them for granted but a more genuine realisation that having nice clothes and jewellery did not in itself provide a guarantee of happiness.

So whilst all Omegá Queens deliberately wove clever personas as a form of disguise and self-protection, Mateo was somewhat unique in that his own persona was one he chose almost unconsciously out of a simple desire to emulate his mother.

Consuela's arrogant temper, born and honed from being raised as nobility, seemed so inappropriate of a Pamplona whore that it was truly magnificent to witness and it was the unexpected performance of that fiery temperament that caused its recipients to invariably crumble.

So Mateo styled himself on his mother, making every molehill of a crisis into a mountainous dramatic tragedy and every wave of minor emotion into a tsunami of passion. And since none but he knew it was merely a performance, it didn't matter that beneath all the dramatic tears he was, fundamentally, a content and happy pup.

In fact, the first time he met anyone seemingly not totally fooled by his well-honed performance of spoilt, brattish, dramatic diva was the day he first met Fergus Crowley.

But perhaps I should rewind a little.

Consuela Del Torrero remained locked in dispute with the local church and government representatives for nine years, the heated exchanges between them increasing dramatically as each year passed. Primarily because fewer and fewer worshippers bothered to attend the City's formal Lunasday services, preferring instead to call directly upon Mateo himself.

So as the years passed, fewer and fewer attendees of the brothel were paying customers and by the time Mateo presented at fourteen, over 90% of the brothel's entire income was from alms payments. Most of the older whores had retired entirely and were simply styling themselves as priestesses of the Omadonna Enfanta and Consuela was now formally acknowledged as the Madam of the establishment.

It was unspoken but generally accepted by all, that the payment of Mateo's Bride price would finally allow the brothel to close its doors for good, allowing all the women employed there to live their remaining years in financial security.

This was something Mateo was fully aware of and took great pride in. He adored all of his doting 'aunts' and obviously his mother, and was determined to mate well for their sakes as much as his own.

The reason the dispute with the local churches ended on Mateo's presentation was nothing to do with Consuela, however. It was entirely due to a visit to the brothel by the Queen of Navarre.

Although it would not have been inappropriate for the Queen of the local Pack to visit Mateo anytime before his presentation, it was virtually an expected event as soon as his Omegá status became 'official'. It was, indeed, the prospect of that visit which had made the local Churches so horrified by Mateo's home address. It was assumed by all that the Omegá Queen would not only refuse to attend the brothel himself but that he would bring the wrath of the Packs down on the local Beta administration for allowing the situation to remain unaddressed.

But, of course, the Free Betas (even those of España) had no true comprehension of the fluid sexual morality that existed within the Packs. To Pack Born people, the profession of prostitution was a perfectly noble and valid one as long as performed by consenting adults as an expression of free will. The Packs took no issue at the idea of exchanging money for sexual favours.

So the Navarran Queen, Eduardo, arrived at Consuela's brothel and stepped through the door with no hesitation whatsoever, and immediately declared himself totally bewitched by tiny Mateo. He agreed with Consuela that Mateo was clearly safe, happy and adequately worshipped in his current residence and that although Mateo was more than welcome to move into Pack Land, Eduardo was equally satisfied to simply start the process of looking for suitable mates for him to choose from when he finally reached the age of sixteen.

After Consuela received the support and the endorsement of the Navarran Queen, her opposition from the local Church collapsed and she stopped even pretending to run a brothel any longer. A notice was placed outside the building declaring it was now The Capilla de la Omadonna Enfanta, and the former prostitutes began the business of collecting alms with far more passion than they'd ever displayed to their clients.

And so it was that by the age of sixteen, Mateo was so accustomed to being publicly worshipped and adored that one might have expected he fully bought into his own publicity but, whilst it is inarguable that he did develop some considerable belief in his own charm and beauty, he never lost his genuine love and affection for the former prostitutes and so never developed any belief that he was superior to them in any way. His ability to fully empathise with the women who had raised him helped him to retain a level of humility underneath his surface aura of supreme confidence.

It was perhaps, though, inevitable that when he reached the age of sixteen he found every Primá offered for his consideration to be inadequate.

By the age of eighteen, Consuela was beginning to despair of ever receiving a Bride price for him, though by that time the Capilla de la Omadonna Enfanta was pretty secure financially anyway so she genuinely was more concerned about Mateo's future happiness than her own retirement fund.

It was, however, in Mateo's eighteenth year that a rumour reached España that Cain Sethson was planning on scouring Europe for a bride for his eldest son. As soon as Eduardo contacted Mateo to advise him of the opportunity, Mateo determined that he was moving to America.

As he told his mother, he didn't know or care what Raphael Cainson looked like or what manner of personality he had. He was an Adam Primá, most likely due to inherit the mantle of Grandé Alpha Primá of the American Union, and therefore he was the Primá that Mateo would mate.

So Consuela del Torrero, who was a cunning and effective businesswoman, arranged for Mateo's desired Primá to fall into his clutches simply by sending Cain a carefully edited video of her gorgeous pup and sending it with a demand for the most outrageously huge Bride Price. She reasoned it would be the most effective way of making Mateo irresistible to the huge ego of an Adam Primá.

And, proving that she was correct, Cain Sethson responded to her offer by sending one of his First Alphas, a Fergus Crowley, who arrived in España with a vast array of Hope Gifts and a letter of authority to conclude the negotiation if Mateo agreed to Raphael's offer of a mating bite.

It was Mateo's first meeting with Crowley that set the tone not only for that negotiation but that set in stone the persona with which Mateo arrived in America.

On Eduardo's advice, Mateo moved to the Pamplona Pack Hall and was residing in an apartment on the Queen's Hall by the time Crowley arrived.

He also, on the advice of Eduardo, determined that he would present Crowley with a persona of demure, coy, innocence. The Adam Primáres were not known for embracing the idea of high-spirited Brides and Chuck was still to cement his own international reputation as a trail-blazer in that respect at the time when his oldest son, Raphael, was looking for a mate.

So it was Mateo's intention to portray himself as a meek, biddable Bride at least until the contracts were signed. He and Eduardo were both certain that was Raphael's desired type of Bride and Mateo was perfectly content to play along. He reasoned he would then have an entire lifetime to adjust his mate's expectations to the contrary.

Mateo's intentions didn't last past five minutes of Crowley's personality.

Although the initial greetings were cordial and formally respectful, with Mateo simply batting his huge black eyelashes coquettishly whilst Eduardo enthused to Crowley about Mateo's beauty, perfection and (of apparent overriding importance to Raphael) virginity, Crowley glowered with increasing irritation at every further evidence of Mateo's apparent passivity.

"You're extremely short for an Omegá," he finally barked at Mateo, with a rudeness that caused Eduardo's mouth to drop open in horrified shock. "Was there a famine here whilst you were in the womb?"

It was, perhaps, the utter precision with which Crowley threw the insult that caused all of Mateo's fire to ignite.

Fully aware of his own origins, Mateo had often suspected his tiny stature was less a natural inevitability and more likely the result of Consuela literally almost starving to death during early pregnancy. He had no scientific knowledge to support that suspicion but it had always dwelt in the back of his mind as a genuine possibility. Since Consuela's brush with near-starvation had been purely due to her determination to save his life, Mateo saw any criticism of his height as being an intolerable insult to his mother.

"You're extremely short for an Alpha, Cowbell," he snapped, tossing his head and stamping his feet with displeasure. "I'm offended Cain Sethson chose a litter-runt to negotiate for my hand."

Eduardo looked likely to swoon.

Crowley, however, responded to the insult with a deep belly-laugh and then bowed with exaggerated civility to the tiny Omegá. "Touché," he said, with a satisfied grin. "I hoped there was more to you than it appeared. You're going to be perfect."

Mateo frowned deeply, a perfect little V forming between his brows. "I believed Raphael Cainson was hunting for a perfectly traditional bride," he countered.

Crowley smirked.

"What Raphael wants is irrelevant," he pointed out. "He's only a Primá. I am here to find what Raphael _needs._ You'll be perfect, my little princess. Chuck will adore you. He prefers Omegáres who craft powerful personas. Forget the coy act. It doesn't suit you. The spoilt brat will be far more suitable for America. It will serve you far better."

"Well, I never," Eduardo began, his entire posture stiffening with offence. "I shall have you flogged for insulting the Enfanta."

But Mateo laughed, the sound so bright and genuine that both the older Omegá and the Alpha turned to him with surprise.

"I like you," Mateo stated, nodding at the small Alpha. "You're...useful. I can see why Chuck trusted you with this matter."

Crowley accepted the adjective with a nod of acknowledgement. "My loyalty is only ever given freely," he said, seemingly apropos of nothing, but Mateo nodded his thoughtful acknowledgement.

"As is my trust," he replied.

Crowley nodded. "Always," he said.

And whilst nothing else was ever said on the matter and Eduardo never understood the conversation he had witnessed, and anyone else witnessing all further interactions between Mateo and Crowley would have described them as mildly adversarial at best, it is undoubtedly true that an understanding was reached between them.

So that is why, over a decade later, when Mateo found himself in a situation so terrible that he knew nowhere to turn, when he had no reason to trust anyone around him and even his fellow Omegáres had the shadow of suspicion hanging over them, that it was Crowley to whom he immediately turned for help.


	109. Chapter One Hundred and Four.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things move pretty quickly here, a lot of stuff is covered, and it's long because I decided in the end that it made more sense in this part to skip POV's a lot so whilst a lot of questions remain open you get a much better idea now of what is going on all over the place. There are some pretty difficult themes covered in this chapter, though I leave the details to your imagination, and there's no way I can edit it to make the overall subject matter any more palatable. So, all I'll say in advance is sorry if this presses any personal triggers.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~

~~~

"What on earth is that racket?" Mateo demanded, as the faint but distinct sounds of chaotic disturbance invaded his private apartment. Although the noise was a distant rumbling cacophony, it was interspersed with occasional high pitched shouts that broke out of the general uproar like exclamation points. And, although the little Queen could hear the deep throated furious barking of a dog within the chaotic orchestra of pandemonium, he suspected the most disturbing sound, the howl that was more lupine than canine, was a cry of despair torn from a human throat.

It was one of his Esne who answered, the Beta's always serious and forbidding mien even paler than its usual ghostly hue and its eyes dark with confused fear. Its fingers flashed with such nervous urgency that Mateo struggled to read the message they spoke. Or perhaps it was simply the impossibility of what it was saying that made its message too confusing to comprehend.

“Don't be ridiculous. The Domina has not gone missing,” Mateo scoffed. “Missing? How the hell can he be missing? He's obviously just wandered off somewhere and his Esne weren't paying attention to where he went. NO. The Domina has most certainly NOT ascended to Heaven."

The Esne's fingers spoke rapidly once more, their message insistent.

Mateo rolled his eyes with impatience. "For goodness sake, get out of my way. I don't have time for this superstitious religious claptrap. I'll go find out what is happening for myself."

~~~

Crowley was finding himself equally frustrated by the Esne who, despite the danger of Buddy and Juliet frantically rushing around Dean's private chambers in obvious distress, their huge bodies crashing against the far wall as though attempting to break through it, were kneeling serenely in the corridor between Dean's bedroom and the rest of the apartment, their countenances a peculiar combination of frightened and exultant.

"Dean is not in sodding Heaven, you idiots," Crowley roared at them. "The Omadonna has NOT descended to miraculously snatch him up. Dean is not floating on some fluffy cloud having a tête-à-tête with the Goddess. He's a flesh and blood man, the size of a small horse, and he has not vanished into thin air, so get off your bony asses and help me find him.”

~~~

_Dean imagined he must be sleeping, for the landscape was like that of a dream, or perhaps a nightmare, and yet the fact he was dreaming about wondering whether he was dreaming was, in itself, a problematic idea._

_And it was not just the bizarre dreamlike quality of his surroundings that caused him to doubt the evidence of his own eyes. He felt... peculiar... almost as though he was simultaneously bound and yet also unshackled. It felt almost as though he were outside his own body, unrestrained by flesh at all, spirit walking, perhaps. Because he had no sense of cold or heat, nor of hunger or thirst, and could move his limbs without a problem yet, despite that blithe feeling of freedom, he had the odd certainty that this was not his actual true physical body._

_The landscape stretched like taffy, silver shimmering barriers that pulsed around him like the walls of a womb, breathing vast inhalations and exhalations that caused the walls to ebb and flow around him with sickening, nauseating speed. Nothing remained constant. Every molecule of the place seemed to be in constant motion, bleeding, flowing and stretching and transforming so that the moment he had a fixed point to focus upon, it sped away into the distance and disappeared into a void of bright, pulsing translucent haze._

_It was although he was stood in the midst of a wormhole as envisaged by a thousand movies in his puphood. A cgi created interpretation of a spaceship moving at warp speed. Though it was definitely his surroundings that were moving around him, whilst he remained a fixed point around which the scenery bled in golden streamers formed purely of light._

_It was bizarre and alien and nauseating and beyond the comprehension of mortal eyes._

_A fever dream of dizzying impossibility._

_And though he had no frame of reference, no prior experience to suggest any explanation or interpretation of what he was seeing, he remained certain of one impossible truth:_

_Whether his presence in that place was dream or reality, and despite having no memory of ever seeing the place before, Dean had the oddest feeling he had somehow come ‘home’._

_But that was even less likely than the idea of it being real._

_Because Dean was absolutely certain that the place he was standing inside was Heaven._

~~~

“No,” Crowley insisted fiercely. “There’s no way Dean just walked out of the apartment by himself. Even if the Esne let him leave unchallenged, and the way they are behaving right now I wouldn’t even put it past the crazy bastards, Buddy and Juliet wouldn’t have allowed it. I only woke up because they were both going insane, throwing themselves against Dean’s bedroom door, trying to get inside. And when I opened the door for them, the room was empty. The fucking Esne are insisting he’s ascended or some such crap. They won’t even go look for him.”

“Why wasn’t Buddy in Dean’s room with him?” Mateo demanded angrily.

Crowley shrugged.

“Dean’s allergic to cats. He copes with Buddy’s presence during the daytime with the help of anti-histamines but he wouldn’t be able to sleep in a room filled with cat dander. And he’d never let Juliet stay in his room when Buddy isn’t allowed inside. So they both have their beds out here, guarding Dean from anyone approaching his room. No one could have gotten past them. Including Dean himself.

“Besides, it’s like they’re both convinced he’s somehow just teleported through solid stone, considering the fact they’ve been trying to break the bedroom wall down since I let them in.”

Mateo startled visibly and blinked rapidly. “Wait here,” he snapped, and ran off at a speed Crowley would never have considered possible in heels so high.

~~

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Lucifer smirked. "Is that any way to greet your brother?"

"You don't make casual house calls, Lucy," Michael pointed out.

"I decided you might need some plausible deniability," Lucifer replied. "I imagine any time tomorrow morning, Raphael is going to be on your doorstop, charging the ramparts of your Pack Hall, looking for his missing guest."

"He won't need to charge. I'll leave the gate wide open in welcome," Michael stated calmly. "I fully anticipate that his suspicion will immediately be drawn in my direction the moment they discover Dean is gone. It's irrelevant. I'll invite him to apply a truth geis to my entire pack if he likes. There are none here in Canada who know of my involvement in this matter and Raphael won't be able to conceive of any way in which I managed to abduct Dean without the help of any of my Alphas."

"Well, the trail will definitely lead towards the Betas, rather than the Packs," Lucifer agreed. "When it all finally shakes down, the only question remaining will be how the Betas learned of the secret passages in the Pack Hall."

"Well, Alastair told me that's why Dean had to be taken from Philadelphia, because it's the only one that has a secret corridor, and so Betas must have built it at some point, and I imagine they might have been the ancestors of modern Free Betas so the information could have reached the Betas in that fashion."

"Plausible," Lucifer agreed, not correcting Michael's belief the backdoors to the queen's floor were unique to the Philadelphia Hall. Clearly there was still a limit to how much Chuck trusted Michael. “And since Gabriel is going to be on the war path too, considering he was planning to leave with Dean tomorrow, the fact I’m here to swear that Dean definitely isn’t in Canada will swiftly divert his attention towards the American Betas too.”

“You want war declared between Norway and the American Free Betas?”

“It isn’t part of the actual plan, but it wouldn’t hurt, would it? It would definitely put a temporary spoke in their plans. I needed more time than this. Everything is happening far too quickly.”

Michael bit his lower lip. “I don’t know about that. There’s still the chance they’ll never actually go ahead with the release of the drug. Administrations change, Lucy. All it would take is the Betas voting in someone with some moral fibre and all of this would be unnecessary. It happened in the Confederacy. Lots of the Betas do want peace with the Packs.”

“I’m pretty sure that what happened in Sioux Falls screwed the pooch on that idea,” Lucifer said with a shrug.

Then he grinned evilly. “Talking of screwing pooches…”

~~

Mateo ran into his bedroom, locked the door behind him and, crossing to the mantelpiece, swiftly activated the mechanism that opened the secret back door into the dark corridor beyond. Then, with a muttered curse as he considered the uneven cobbled floor of the dark corridor, he pulled off his high heels and changed them for the flat sandals he usually only used as slippers inside his private rooms, changed his short silk gown for a pair of tight leather trousers and quickly wrapped his long hair into a tight, tidy plait.

Then, confident he could now move at a much better pace than when dressed as a ‘Queen’, he grabbed a torch and entered the chilly darkness of the secret passage and hurried as quickly as it was safe to do so to the rear of Dean’s apartment.

He knew Dean hadn’t officially used the passage during the time of his visit, so the fact the dust of ages had been heavily disturbed outside of Dean’s ‘doorway’ confirmed his suspicion that Dean had exited that way.

The problem was, there was no way Mateo could imagine Dean having a reason to leave alone, especially without Buddy, unless he had, for some reason, wanted to enter the main hall surreptitiously via the Queen’s antechamber. But Cody had already run frantically all around the lower levels of the Pack Hall to confirm that Dean was nowhere to be found.

Anyway, running along the ancient cobblestones, glad of his sensible clothing, Mateo soon realised that the disturbed dust trail led not in the direction of the Main Hall but turned in the direction of the back entrance. An entrance that hadn’t previously been used in well over a century. The floor was thick with the dust and debris of hundred years of adandonment, so the evidence of its recent use was unquestionable since a thick trail of heavy footprints in the dust was so glaringly obvious that it might as well have been painted on the floor in fat arrows.

As was the fact that, without a blueprint, Dean could not possibly have reached it so unerringly. There were no hesitation marks in the trail, no backtracking or wrongly taken steps. Just a direct route exactly marked between the entrance of the escape tunnel and the rear of the apartment Dean had been staying in. 

And that meant Dean couldn't be the one responsible for making it.  He would inevitably have stumbled around in a hunt for the exit if it were he who had chosen to leave. So the trail was that of someone coming out of the clandestine entrance, walking to Dean’s room and then taking him back out via the same route.

To the best of Mateo’s knowledge, the back entrance led to a tunnel that emerged several miles from the hall itself, beyond the border barrier and clear inside Beta Land.

And only Omegáres knew it existed.

Fair enough you didn’t need to know the complicated sequence to open the secret doors from inside the connecting passage. The doors opened freely inwards. So any designation could have done the deed of kidnapping Dean. Because Mateo was in no doubt whatsoever now that kidnap was the only explanation that made sense. But only an Omegá could have provided the information of the existence of the secret passage in the first place.

And not just any Omegá.

It would have to be a Queen. And, in fact, only one of a select few Queens to whom the secret had been confided.

The direct route taken to Dean's room, furthermore, also suggested it had to be someone who had been able to obtain the information of exactly which apartment had been allocated to Dean as a guest in the Philadelphia Hall.  So that narrowed the pool of potential suspects even further.

Mateo knew it wasn’t him and would bet his life that it wouldn’t be Daniel. But he had a horrible, sneaking suspicion it might have been Chuck.

Chuck who apparently, for no known reason, had concealed his own relationship to Dean from his own son. Chuck who apparently didn’t want Dean to mate with Castiel. Chuck who might, just possibly, think that handing Dean over to another Primá might solve the problem and had possibly grabbed the last opportunity to do so before Dean left for Norway.

Although all of that was only a hunch, as was his sneaking suspicion that Michael might not have taken kindly to being so humiliated in front of his ‘true mate’, Mateo’s gut insisted that the two most obvious people in the frame for this were Chuck and Michael.

But he couldn’t even attempt to have that conversation with Raphael without any evidence to support it. To accuse Raphael’s own mother and uncle of something so heinous would be seen as unforgiveable unless it could be proven beyond doubt.

Besides, how could he betray his own designation by revealing the existence of the secret passages to a Primá? Even if that Prima was his own mate. He’d be as guilty as Chuck of the crime he wished to accuse him of.

So instead of worrying about how proving Dean had left the building, maybe he should simply concentrate on proving he had somehow ended up outside of Pack Land and then take it from there.

But because he didn’t know exactly where the tunnel terminated, and it wasn’t clearly shown on the blueprint of the building in his possession, the only way to find out where Dean had been taken was to go through the passage himself.

And, with the best will in the world, he couldn’t do that alone. The exit might be guarded in anticipation of pursuit and Mateo knew his temper alone wouldn’t be sufficient weapon in such circumstances. Although he hated admitting weakness, his pride was not more important than Dean's safety.  Five foot of fury wasn't going to cut it. He needed help.

And, there was currently only one person in the whole Pack Hall who Mateo trusted without reservation, though most who witnessed their interactions would ever have suspected there was any love lost between them.

~~

_Despite the otherwise completely out of body feeling, where he was so detached from his senses that they did not seem to belong to him at all,  Dean became gradually aware of a deep boiling sensation somewhere just south of his rib cage. Not the fiery burn of acid indigestion, nor the stabbing pain of kidney infection, just a low, roiling persistent heat that both burned and yet comforted though that dichotomy seemed an impossible combination._

_So maybe it was just a dream, after all. Though a fever dream, filled with confusion and intensity and a bizarre conviction that what he was seeing was real even though he knew it could not possibly be so. Perhaps he truly had a fever, some terrible infection coursing through his body, and this landscape was his mind's attempt to visualise the battle being raged within his own blood cells._

_He pinched himself, vaguely remembering the adage that such might awaken him. It hurt his arm but the vision did not waver. So that didn't work, unless he was only dreaming about pinching himself and yet his arm began to throb angrily, the hot pulsing pain abruptly far out of proportion to the pinch he had given himself and, when he looked down, he saw a dark bruise inside his left elbow, centred around a swollen, red pinprick that looked suspiciously like a needle insertion mark._

_Something poked at his mind. A memory, fuzzy and indistinct. Something about... darkness or danger or... no... the memory slipped away again leaving only the unsettling certainty that something was terribly wrong._

_Had he been drugged?_

_But why would being drugged result in him waking in this place?_

_Unless he was drugged and just dreaming of being in this place._

_Or just dreaming he'd been drugged._

_His head hurt._

~~

“Look, there’s no reason for you to come with me,” Crowley stated firmly. “I have Juliet and a phone. I’ll call you as soon as I get out the other side and you can meet me in your car.”

Mateo sneered.

“You’re coming with ME, cowbell,” he pointed out. “I'm just letting you tag along. Besides, if I come, Buddy will come too.”

He was right, of course. Whilst Buddy was fully loyal to Dean alone, it was undoubtedly true that the big cat could be safely trusted to aid and protect the little Omegá also. Crowley wasn’t sure whether it was the particular scent of an Omegá that caused the reaction or a more spiritual connection, but the Mountain Lion had quickly obeyed Mateo when the little queen (in his surprisingly practical outfit) had arrived back at Dean's apartment  looking a bit sweaty and disheveled and immediately summoned Buddy to heel.

Crowley swallowed heavily. It was bad enough to have lost HIS charge without also losing Raphael’s Queen, but there wasn’t time for them to argue about it and Buddy was inevitably going to be a huge asset in following Dean’s trail.

“Okay,” he agreed. “We get Jessica and Cody to sign out your car, drive through the border and park up somewhere. Then we’ll call them to come meet us when we get out the other side and figure out where we are."

~~

“I don’t like it,” Michael said. “The whole thing is overcomplicated.”

Lucifer grinned. “Whilst I’d usually agree that simple is best, there are far too many opposing players with their own agendas in this drama for anything less to work.”

"And you're sure this is the only way?" Michael demanded fretfully.

"It's a bit too late to change your mind, brother," Lucifer sneered. "I'm pretty sure the deed is already done by now. Didn't you give Alastair the go ahead two days ago?"

"I just don't see why it has to be done this way. Why does it have to be this particular pup?"

"Because Alastair only had access to your sperm and mine, and I'm not in the market for yet another Bride yet," Lucifer laughed darkly. "When Dean is ready to give birth and the amniotic sac bursts inside him, he'll automatically bond to the pup's signature and before puberty a Primá always shares his Sire's pheromones. Otherwise primative Primares would all have probably have killed their own young as potential rivals."

Michael frowned with irritation.

"I know that. I'm not talking about the surviving pup. I'm talking about the Sword."

"Which is also a pup," Lucifer pointed out.

"I know," Michael agreed, with a shudder. "But I don't see why we couldn't have used one of the Chinese Omegáres for that part of the plan. It's bad enough tricking Dean into becoming my Bride this way, without me having such a horrid, dirty secret as this added into the mix. All the Chinese pups are Dean's true offspring anyway. I'd rather it wasn't _his_ body being risked in this way."

Lucifer shrugged one shoulder carelessly. "Well, for one thing, the Sword has to be one of a pair of monozygotic twins, or Chuck wouldn't have agreed to the idea of the plan at all, and without the surviving twin you don't get to win your bride so I don't see how any other scenario would have worked to _your_  benefit."

"Bollocks," Michael snapped rudely. "I'm not that damned gullible, Lucy. You somehow set this up so the only reason Alastair would help me at all is in exchange for the chance to use Dean to create the Sword."

"Well, regardless, it satisfied Chuck."

"Because Chuck is an idiot," Michael spat. "How the hell could you have convinced him that identical twins share one soul?"

Lucifer shrugged. "I'm just naturally persuasive," he said. "Besides, I suspect Chuck always choses to believe whatever he needs to believe. It's not as though there's another choice. The vaccine is going to be produced by Roman Industries regardless. All we are doing is using Alastair to control the choice of genetic material used for its creation."

"It's fucked up and obscene," Michael snarled. "The whole idea of it makes me sick."

"Oh, grow up, Mike. Every major vaccine in the world is created from cells of foetal tissue," Lucifer pointed out. "How the hell do you think vaccinations for things like measles are created? It's the unique way that embryonic cell tissue divides and duplicates that makes the development of the vaccinations possible. But those are all developed from aborted Beta pups.

"This particular vaccination needs to be created from Primá cells and if you think an Alpha resists abortion, you can't even begin to imagine how a Primá foetus would react to the process. It would attempt to rip both itself and its mother apart before letting go of the uterine wall. The only Omegá I can even imagine surviving the procedure is Dean Winchester, especially given the way the Omadonna healed him in Pierre. Why would the Goddess interfere directly in his healing if not so he could survive this particular trial? And it's not like he hasn't benefited, is it? Alastair originally intended to remove his ovaries completely, but with this new plan he's had to leave one of them intact to produce the correct pregnancy hormones. Dean will eventually come out of this completely healed, will have a pup inside him and will still be able to conceive further pups with you after you mate. He'll never even know the Sword existed. Alastair will keep him sedated throughout the entire period.”

“You’re sure?” Michael demanded.

“Impregnating an Omegá like Dean isn’t like popping one into your sad little barren Omegáres who are so grateful for the chance to give birth again they just sit there rocking in happiness. A normal Omegá like Dean wouldn’t even catch pregnant with a fertilised egg if he felt he was in a place of danger. His body would just store the zygote for later.”

“But Alastair attaches the zygotes directly to the uterine wall,” Michael argued. “He completely bypasses any risk of embryonic diapause.”

“But not embryonic resorbtion,” Lucifer countered.

“That can happen?” Michael blinked uncertainly.

“In an Omegá,” Lucifer said. “Unless Dean remains comatose through at least the first nine weeks of pregnancy, he could automatically react by simply resorbing the embryo back inside his own body. Omegáres are perfectly designed, brother. They not only can’t be mated against their will, they can’t be impregnated against their own will either.  Since you refused to accept a lobotomised Bride, the only way that Alastair can achieve this at all is to do absolutely everything whilst Dean is kept unconscious. Alastair won’t dare risk waking him until at least six weeks after the Sword is removed, by which time there will be no evidence whatsoever that he ever existed in he first place. Dean will never know the fate of his womb’s first pup.”

"You're sure he'll never know?"

Lucifer shrugged. "Why would he? He won't even know you had anything to do with this. Alastair Lues is a Beta Government Scientist. This whole procedure is happening at the request of Dick Roman, aided and abetted by Senator Rosen who everybody knows has a bone to pick with Dean. It will make perfect sense that Rosen chose him out of sheer spite rather than necessity. So Dean will wake up in nine weeks in a secret Free Beta Laboratory in the middle of Nebraska and every record in that place will attest that the Primá sperm sample used was obtained illicitly to create the pup growing inside him. Because he will still be pregnant, why would anyone assume he was originally bearing twins? It's not as though they are natural occurances in Omegá pregnancies, is it? Dean won't even know who the sire of his remaining pup is. Well, not until it's born and he finds himself automatically bonded to you. At which point you just play dumb. Shouldn't be too hard for you."

~~

  
_Time passed at an incalculable rate and still the landscape around Dean remained an alien impossibility of a place both vastly eternal and yet claustrophobically small. Walls that shimmered like silver mirages around him, so close he felt almost smothered by their heavy pulsing presence, yet the ceiling above him seemed to stretch into infinity. And though his feet felt planted on solidity, as though he were standing on clear glass, the space beneath him was also an open plunge into infinity, a stomach churning drop that caused him to sway with vertigo. No matter how solid the floor felt, Dean didn't believe there was any substance in the world strong enough to make him feel comfortable about standing over a hole so deep that it seemed endless._

_And even the shimmering walls shifted and flowed, one moment almost pressing against his flesh, the next expanding almost away from visible sight, only to spring back again to entrap him whenever he attempted to cautiously step across the nausea-inducing floor._

_The shimmering walls continued to ebb and flow, contracting and expanding with almost dizzying speed and whenever they briefly pulled away, the air surrounding him filled with a distant cacophony of howls and wails of grief and pain, as though the barriers separated him from some place of unimaginable torment. So he was as loathe to attempt to breach them as he was to remain in that solitary spot where nothing directly threatened him, save the idea of plummeting through the translucent floor._

_But when the walls pulled away the next time, almost as though they were lungs filling with air, Dean called out into the vast expanse, meeting the groans and cries with a clearly spoken greeting._

_And though his words were unacknowledged by the unknown sufferers beyond the walls, the white light surrounding him began to warm into yellow, and although the walls pulled back towards him, this time they stopped far short of his position so he no longer felt in danger of being crushed between them._

_"Hello," a voice said, inquisitively._

_Although he spun around in panic, he saw no source for the voice. The room remained empty save for himself and the throbbing, shimmering walls._

_"Who are you? What is this place?" he asked._

_The yellow glow thickened, solidified, its dissipated light flowing together to form an almost solid pillar of golden essence. And though that essence had no true form nor face, it spoke._

_"This is the place beyond the veil. The dimension beyond time and space. You are in the place that mortals call Heaven."_

~~

“Argghh,” Mateo snarled, ripping another cobweb out of his face. “This is a fucking nightmare. I’m filthy and I smell and I swear my torch is about to die.”

“It’s definitely a hell of a lot longer tunnel than I’d anticipated,” Crowley agreed, sweat pouring in rivulets down his face as he strained to hold Juliet’s lead. Despite his immense Alpha strength, he couldn’t compete with her balance. She’d caught the scent and was pulling him forward at a pace far more comfortable for four legs than two on the rough-hewn, uneven surface of the passage.

They were slopping through several inches of water now, dank stagnant water which was both a blessing and a curse, since it stunk disgustingly but they were, at least, comforted that they were unlikely to meet a level of water that was unpassable. It simply seemed to be the accumulation of old rainwater into a tunnel built slightly below the watertable.

“We must have been walking for an hour,” Mateo grumbled.

“We’ve probably covered about three miles,” Crowley said, “So we must be coming to the end of the passage. The map you showed me indicated it was about that long.”

Juliet started barking excitedly as soon as the words were out of his mouth and she pulled forward with such sudden enthusiasm that he tripped and fell face first into the water, accidentally releasing the leash.

She bounded out of sight, accompanied by Buddy, who was growling so loudly that it was almost a roar.

Mateo reached to help him up, then thought better and simply stepped backwards enough to allow the sopping wet Alpha to haul himself, spluttering, out of the filthy water.

“You’re not getting in MY car like that,” Mateo announced, with a sniff of distain.

“Thanks for the sympathy, sweetheart," Crowley grunted, leading the way in pursuit of the two beasts.

Who had found the exit and were crashing against it with great enthusiasm but very little effect.

“The beauty of opposable thumbs, “ Crowley smirked, as he snatched Juliet’s leash before locating and triggering the exit mechanism.

The four of them spilled out into a wooded area, with no obvious exit. Fortunately, both Juliet and Buddy were confident of the right direction to go, leading them perhaps half a mile through a convoluted path that twisted through trees and brush before emerging out to the side of a deserted road.

Where Juliet ran around in frantic circles for a while before she abruptly halted, sat back on her haunches and let out a howl of distress.

“So,” Crowley said, punching Jessica’s number into his phone and sending her co-ordinates to join them. “They took him from here in a car.”

“And they must have gone left,” Mateo said, using his own phone handset to check their exact location, “because right leads only back to the Pack Land Border.”

“But we don’t know what they were driving, or who they are, or where they are going,” Crowley pointed out.

“No. But we can involve Raphael now. We can give him THIS location as a starting point,” Mateo replied.

“And when he asks how we found it?”

“You say the Goddess spoke through me and told you where to look,” Mateo replied, raising his chin in challenge.

Crowley swallowed heavily, then nodded. “I will keep your confidence,” he assured Mateo. “But only if Dean’s life is not further endangered by the keeping of your secret.”

“Oh, I assure you I will deal with the secret part myself,” Mateo said. “I shall join Castiel. I believe he is already enroute to ask his mother some difficult questions.”

 

~~

 

_"Am I dead?" Dean demanded. He couldn’t imagine any other reason he might be in Heaven._

_The molecules of the being formed of gaseous gold seemed to churn with agitation for a moment. Then, after an endless moment of contemplation it stated only, "You should not be here."_

_"Well, I have no idea how I got here," Dean said, "but if you show me the way back, I'll gladly leave."_

_The pillar flamed, two arcs rising up behind it almost like wings._

_"You should not be here, " it repeated. "How are you here?"_

_Dean rolled his eyes in exasperation, his right hand moving to clutch at his stomach which was now throbbing fiercely. Maybe it was acid indigestion, he decided, considering how much the heat was agitated by his own confused annoyance. "I just told you, I have no idea how I got here. If I'm even here at all and not just having some feverish nightmare."_

_"You should not be here," the essence repeated yet again, though this time its tone was more curious than accusatory. "And yet, here you are. Interesting."_

_A piece of essence broke free and shot towards Dean like an arrow, piercing through his flesh and bursting out the other side only to then return to the pillar. Although the invasion had been painless, Dean still stiffened with a sense of violation. "What the fuck?" he demanded._

_"You are still fully mortal," the being said. "I do not understand how you can be here at all. It is not written."_

_"Yeah, well that makes two of us, bud," Dean snapped. "I have no idea how I got here either."_

_"The soul of a living mortal does not belong in Heaven."_

_"So I am definitely alive?"_

_"For now," it confirmed dispassionately. "I had imagined your presence here meant something other entirely, yet your ignorance of all is not an affectation. You truly do not know why you have arrived here."_

_"As I told you," Dean replied irritably._

_"I must assume you were drawn to this place for a reason. I can only imagine that reason was your need for enlightenment."_

_"Getting a bit of goddamned enlightenment sounds mightily awesome to me," Dean agreed._

_"That is my purpose," the essence agreed. "I am the source of knowledge and understanding in this place."_

_"Are you... are you the Omadonna?"_

_The gold essence swirled, forming and reforming its shapes through a rapid series of wings and limbs and tails, as though every creature in creation lived in potential within the fiery glow and each was fighting to emerge into life. Finally the rapid shifting slowed and the essence formed itself into a single shape that was peculiarly reminiscent of a Flores._

_"I am. And yet I am not. I am but one small aspect of the Omadonna," it stated. "Just one single facet of the Omadonna's multifaceted jewel. I am part of the whole, yet completely separate unto myself."_

_"And your purpose?"_

_"I am Enlightenment," the being stated. "You stated finding me was your wish. Well, you have found me."_

_"I think we're talking at cross-purposes," Dean groaned. "I meant I want to know what's going on. Can you tell me?"_

_"I bring wisdom to light the dark places in men's souls." Its tone was flat and inflectionless and yet still Dean detected a level of threat in the divine creature's speech. The essence, whilst beautiful, was cold. Its flames might have been the rich hue of burnished gold, but they offered no comforting warmth. Nothing emitted from the creature save a chilly frigidity that set the hairs on Dean's arms to rise and vibrate._

_"Am I dreaming?"_

_"Perhaps," the being allowed, "Or maybe you're dying." The suggestion was made with the same, flat inflection of total indifference._

_"But I'm not actually dead?" Dean demanded._

_The essence swirled, forming and reforming into various nightmare scenarios, before setting once more. "I do not believe so," it stated. "You are merely peering beyond the veil. You have not crossed over. Yet."_

_"So where is this place? What is it? Hell?"_

_"There is no 'hell'," the being replied. "There is only ever heaven. It is infinite."_

 ~~

"I don't understand the delay. Couldn't you have used another Omegá? I thought you still had a couple in Texas, Rosen."

"Dr Lues assured me it would work better with a virgin Omega, and I don't have any of _them_ to hand," Senator Rosen laughed. "The little sluts don't keep their legs shut for long in Texas. Besides I like the idea of using the Winchester bitch for this. If it wasn't for that bastard, my Becky wouldn't have fallen foul of the Packs. So it's kind of poetic using him to destroy them, isn't it?"

Bishop Dick Roman frowned. "I had no idea the Winchester Omega was a virgin anyway. Wasn't the whole point of Sioux Falls something to do with him being fucked by his brother?"

"I thought so," Rosen agreed, "but when have the packs ever needed any real excuse to grab their land back? They probably invented the incident to justify burning the City. Lues confirmed his virginity the moment he got him out of the Philadelphia Pack Hall and he says the operation was a success."

"So three weeks?" Roman checked.

"That's the earliest he can harvest," Rosen agreed.

"It will take at least eight months to create a sufficent stockpile of 'vaccine' to innoculate everyone. But if we start releasing the flu now in China, by the time the panic over the pandemic spreads worldwide, all governments will be queueing up to purchase the cure from Roman Industries," Roman said, with a smirk of satisfaction.

"What's the predicted death rate of your new strain of flu?" the Senator asked.

"About 8% but that effect will be duplicated in Alphas too. So when we offer the vaccine to the Packs, they won't hesitate to accept."

"You're still talking about potentially millions of Beta deaths," Rosen pointed out.

"Primarily in China and the Asiatic Antipodes. The flu won't get a chance to spread that widely in Europe or America before the vaccine's available," Dick Roman replied carelessly. "Besides, that's the one thing I do agree with the Packs over. There are too many Betas in the world."

"And you're absolutely certain the vaccine will transform the flu as we need?" Rosen demanded.

"The moment the flu is in contact with the vaccine, it will transform into a totally new strain that will only target Alphas, Primáres and Omegáres.  Lues assures me the new resultant virus will eradicate at least 98% of all non-Beta designations.  It will even destroy unborn pups. Within three months of the vaccination program rolling out, there won't be a living human on this planet who isn't a Beta."

~~

"And you're absolutely certain the vaccine will transform the flu as we need it to?" Michael demanded.

"The moment the flu is in contact with the vaccine, it will transform into a totally new strain that will only target Betas. Alastair assures me the new resultant virus will eradicate at leat 80% of the Beta designation. The only Betas who will be guaranteed immunity will be those females with an Alpha or Omegá pup inside them as the embryo will produce sufficient antibodies to protect the host mother," Lucifer said.

"That's going to translate to billions of dead," Michael pointed out. "It's virtually genocide."

"If it happens, it will be _suicide_ ," Lucifer countered. "It won't be _us_ releasing the vaccine.  We aren't the genocidal bastards here, Mike.  We don't want to pull the trigger of the gun.  God willing, the Betas will never deploy the vaccination program and we'll just continue MY plan of how to balance the designations.  But Chuck says they _will_  do so. In his visions, the original 'vaccine' slaughtered the entire non-Beta population of the world and the All-Father responded to that outrage by destroying the sun and letting the whole Universe implode.  Maybe his vision is wrong. Maybe the Betas will come to their senses and not even release the new Chinese Flu, let alone the 'cure'.  But if they do go through with it, they'll discover too late that their own weapon has been turned against them. The Sword will cut a swathe through their rotten, murderous hearts and what remains afterwards, though terrible, will be a world that can be rebuilt. And this time we'll get the balance right."

~~  

_"You're sure it's not Hell? Because it sure sounds like hell to me," Dean muttered, flinching at another distant howl of agony ._

_"That is the personal heaven of Metatron," the being stated. "He requires much enlightenment."_

_"Metatron? He was just a screwed up pup," Dean protested._

_The gold essence swirled with nauseating speed for a moment, then it said, "I refer to THE Metatron. The original." Although the voice was toneless, Dean received the distinct impression the being was amused._

_"You mean the guy who found the Abel Tablet?" Dean questioned carefully._

_"The man who faked the Abel Tablet," it replied. "A clever forgery that would not have passed scrutiny as being authentic in your time, but three hundred years ago none knew how to carbon-date items. Metatron proved to be a remarkably adept student of the art of deception."_

_"So he made it up," Dean spat. "Makes sense. The whole Church of Abel is based on a damned lie."_

_"Indeed. And though the legacy of his perfidy remains on Earth, in his personal heaven Metatron eternally pays the price of his self-aggrandising deception."_

_"And that is what you call heaven?"_

_The essence swirled again, and this time Dean was absolutely certain it was laughing at him. "It is what Metatron 'calls' heaven. In this place he reaps only the rewards he chooses to reap and receives only the enlightenment he is eager to embrace. Guilt is a great conduit through which enlightenment may pour."_

_"I don't understand," Dean admitted._

_"Then, come look," the being said, floating in the direction of the howls of pain._

_Dean followed, cautiously, as they passed through one of the shimmering, opaque walls that felt more like a thickening of the air than an actual barrier and into Metatron's 'heaven'. Then he slammed to a halt, struggling against nausea._

_A crisscrossing pattern of ropes formed a low ceiling of the 'room', a spider-web of knots, and in the centre, suspended, a naked man was trapped in the rope, his limbs spread-eagled, his mouth opened in a constant, keening wail of agony. The source of his pain was immediately obvious. Two chains dangled from his genitals. One attached to his ball-sac, the other to his penis. The chains descended to hold a vast, stone tablet which swung like a pendulum beneath him. Each howl of pain sent a shudder through his body that caused the tablet to sway, and each movement of the stone ripped a scream from his throat. Blood was dripping from his groin in a slow, steady pace, as the chains bit into his flesh. The skin of his scrotum was so stretched that it was literally tearing around the chain and, even as Dean watched, Metatron's balls were abruptly ripped completely from his body and the tablet dropped abruptly into a vertical position, its entire weight now held only by Metatron's penis that had already been stretched almost to tearing point before the additional weight burden._

_Metatron's resultant high-pitched scream of agony was almost deafening, and blood gushed hotly red from his castrated groin._

_Inevitably, the weight next ripped Metatron's penis from his body, leaving nothing but a gaping, raw hole in his pubic mound, and the tablet fell to the floor and shattered._

_Then the entire room seemed to shimmer, like a mirage at a desert, and the fragments of stone and blood splatter vanished along with Metatron's severed genitals and Dean looked up to see that Metatron was still hanging from the web, but his genitals had somehow magically reappeared, along with the chains and their attached stone tablet, and the entire process began again._

_"Heaven is infinite," the being told him, once again, though this time the meaning was far more sinister._

_"This never stops?" Dean asked, gagging in horror. "It is just on constant looping repeat?"_

_"It is ceaseless," the being confirmed. "The entire process takes perhaps three hours for the sequence to conclude and rewind to the beginning. It varies only slightly dependent on how hard he struggles on the rack. So on average, eight times every day this particular scene is reenacted as he punishes himself for his terrible crime."_

_"Every day for the last 300 years?"_

_"Time moves differently in Heaven. Metatron has dwelled here for perhaps 12,000 of your years. He still apparently chooses this particular lesson in his attempt to reach personal enlightenment."_

_"Chooses?" Dean demanded, his mind trying but failing to grasp the full enormity of a torture session lasting twelve thousand years."_

_"Heavens are personal, Dean. They are whatever someone truly believes they deserve. Apparently, the weight of Metatron's guilt still governs his choice. This is not a three dimensional place, Dean. The body you see on that rack is not flesh. You do not witness a physical reality. In this moment we pass merely through a visible enactment of a soul's struggle to erase its own darkness."_

_"So this isn't really happening?"_

_The essence churned silently for a moment, then said "It is real to Metatron's soul. The pain and suffering are real. The execution of that suffering is merely symbolic. We see what Metatron sees, not what truly exists."_

_"So it's in his head?"_

_"In a manner of speaking. This scenario is merely a representation of his soul's suffering and it is within his power alone to choose when his suffering should end."_

_"So he could end this?"_

_"He could."_

_"Does he know that he can?"_

_"I doubt it."_

_"How many people have ever changed their personal heavens? How many of those dwelling in personal 'hells' have reached an understanding that they have paid the price and their punishment should cease?"_

_"None for many centuries," the being admitted. "For the recent dead, Heaven is infinite."_

_"It's barbaric and evil," Dean protested._

_The being swirled. "It's a personal heaven. It can be anything a soul wishes it to be."_

_"Or believes that it is. Metatron feared going to hell, so his heaven has become a hell?"_

_"It is what he wished for."_

_Dean shook his head in negation. "Fearing something is not wishing for it," he argued._

_"Here in Heaven it is," the being replied, emotionlessly. "Heaven provides every soul with what it truly desires. It seems many souls desire punishment. So Heaven provides."_

_"Are all punishments the same?"_

_"Heaven is infinite," the being replied._

_Dean assumed that meant no._

_"Walk with me," the being demanded, leading him through the shimmering wall into the next heaven._

_"Oh, dear god," Dean muttered. "I thought I'd saved him from this."_

_"You did," the being replied. "Yet here he chooses to be unsaved once more. In personal heavens the occupants choose their own forms. You will rarely find one old or infirm or disabled. Most souls remember themselves in their prime and their outward appearance reflects those memories. Only those who choose punishment ever seem to bring their mortal frailties into their personal heavens. Had his soul been stained less with guilt, Azazel would have been perfectly able to appear in his heaven with his limbs intact. The fact he remains a worm eternally is a visual representation of his own blackened conscience. As is his choice of environment and companion."_

_"Who is that?" Dean demanded. "Why are there two versions of him in this scene?"_

_"They are Lucifer Sethson," the being advised. "Or at least manefestations of Lucifer from Azazel's memory. The one he is impaled upon is a Lucifer of his youthful fantasy. The one fucking his mouth is the Lucifer of his nightmares. I assure you the horns do not actually exist in reality. Neither is Lucifer's penis truly barbed in that fashion. Both appear to be embellishments added in Azazel's imagination."_

_"And that's it? Azazel's eternal punishment is to just sit there being fucked both ends simultaneously by cocks bigger than baseball bats?"_

_"I believe it the manifestation of some symbolism. Azazel appears to retain some considerable resentment of Lucifer's role in his downfall. Yet he chooses to remain within his power even in death. Little changes. Once in a while his stomach ruptures when it fills with too much semen or his bowels rupture whenever he imagines it possible that a knot might form inside a Beta," the essence being replied unemotionally. "Both provide a slight change of pace in the proceedings because his 'death' requires a hard re-set of the scenario. Otherwise, this personal heaven remains endlessly boringly predictable."_

_"And he's been here what, three months or so now?" Dean asked, frowning as he tried to calculate that in Heaven's time._

_"Ten years " the being advised helpfully._

_"And this will continue forever?"_

_"If he so chooses."_

_"Which he will, because he isn't aware a choice is possible," Dean pointed out._

_The essence swirled for a moment but said nothing except, "Let us move on. Time is short, for it moves far too swiftly on the mortal plane for you to tarry beyond the veil. Already nine days have passed for your body in the mere few hours you have spent in Heaven. We still have much to see."_

_"Hold on. That's back to front. You said time moved faster here. Now you're saying it moves faster back at home. Which is it?"_

_"You're a mortal, Dean Winchester. Time is linear for you. It is not so in Heaven. A soul could dwell here a century and only a couple of years would pass in the mortal realm. A mortal could be here a week and return to the mortal plane and find that a century has passed in that short absence. Both dimensions exist with their own rules. A mortal has no more place here than a disembodied soul belongs on the mortal plane. You are a chaotic anomaly, Dean. Your soul is walking here whilst still fettered to a mortal body. This is not possible and yet still it is undoubtedly true. You are moving in your own space and time. Stay here too long and only a dried husk of a crumbling corpse will await you on Earth."_

_"Well, I'm more than willing to leave. I think I've seen more than enough of Heaven already," Dean snapped. "I'm not sure I wish to see the myriad of ways in which a soul might punish itself."_

_"Not all heavens are places of punishment, Dean," the being replied, leading him through another shimmering wall into a new heaven._

_"Bobby," Dean gasped. "And....and is that Karen? And Bobby's walking and he's got pups. Lots of pups."_

_"It's an actual conjoined heaven. Very rare these days," the essence advised. "In a normal heaven, Bobby Singer would live with a mere memory of his wife, not her true soul. In this conjoined heaven, the actual souls of Bobby and Karen co-exist. Obviously, the pups are mere fantasy fulfilment, not true souls, but the happiness they bring to their 'parents' is genuine even if the pups are not._

_"Good people do still enjoy Heaven as it was designed to be. Your mother shares her personal heaven with a memory of your Sire as he was when she first met him, and two tiny pups who are undoubtedly you and Sam. It appears to be a very happy place for her."_

_"And my Sire? Who shares his 'heaven'?"_

_"Perhaps better you know not," the being replied quellingly, leading him onwards through a series of 'heavens' that varied from idyllic fantasies to nightmarish tortures, until they finally reached a vast 'heaven' filled with thousands of suffering souls. "Not all personal heavens are individual ," the essence stated, possibly unnecessarily, as Dean stared out at the sea of people. "For those whose religious beliefs embrace the concept of collective responsibility, so the souls share a collective heaven. This particular heaven is that of Ablest martyred missionaries. They sought to spread the false doctrine of Metatron, accepting martyrdom as the cost of acceptance into this communal heaven. Their wishes have been granted."_

_"I don't imagine they expected heaven to be like this," Dean replied dryly._

_The essence swirled around him. "They choose to reap that which they sowed," it replied coldly._

_The vast heaven was filled with rows upon rows of tortured souls, some impaled, some burning on stakes, some were impaled AND burning and yet more were hung upside down with legs wide open, with their rectums split open with huge funnels through which moulten metal was pouring into their anal passages. There were rows of souls boiling in cauldrons of water or oil, and yet more who hung with their flesh being stripped by the application of invisible whips , or skin torn by hot pincers, or limbs being sliced off by invisible blades._

_On one side of the vast heaven there was a huge pit, its floor a churning sea of white hot lava, and hundreds of souls were throwing themselves off the edge of the pit, howling in agony as the immolated themselves in the fiery liquid, only to immediately reform whole at the top once more to rejoin the queue to leap back down._

_"This is obscene."_

_"It is," the being agreed. "This is not how heaven is truly supposed to be."_

_"You're not 'enlightenment' at all," Dean continued. "You're vengeance and punishment but there's nothing of enlightenment here. This is just darkness."_

_A slow hand-clap behind his back startled him into twisting around in panic, to see the form of a tall, unfamiliar, willowy Omegá. His form draped in burnished gold silk that exactly echoed the colour of the essence being and his expression, though serene, was peculiarly alien._

_"Are YOU the Omadonna?" Dean demanded._

_"I am another aspect of the Omadonna," the Omegá replied. "I am redemption."_

_"You surprise me," Dean replied cooly. "I see little evidence of redemption in Heaven."_

_"I did not claim to be 'absolution'," the Omegá replied, his tone equally cold. "My role is redimere. The buying back of favour. The quittance of debts owed."_

_Dean shook his head in firm negation._

_"No. That's bullshit. You're all about retribution, not redimere, because if there is no hope of ever actually paying the debt off, then you're just some loanshark layering interest over interest."_

_The Omegá contemplated his comment for a moment, his countenance stern and unforgiving, and then, surprisingly, the Omegá smiled approvingly and nodded. "Let me show you something," he said._

_He waved his hand, flicking his fingers outwards as though to banish an irritation, and the heaven of the Ablest martyrs vanished completely to be replaced by a vast screen upon which there was a picture that looked to Dean akin to a swarming dark mass of bacteria within a petri dish._

_"This is the seventh level of heaven," the Omegá stated. "The dark cells are heavens of punishment. The light ones are heavens of peace. Let me put this in perspective for you." He flicked his fingers again and the single 'petri' dish was replaced by a vision of seven dishes in a row. The first was almost fully filled with white cells with just a few dozen grey cells and two that were jet black, but each progressive 'dish' contained a few more of both the grey and black cells. However, even the sixth dish in the sequence had only perhaps 10% of dark bacteria in total. The seventh had as much as 80% of its surface darkened by solid black infected cells. "The seventh level of Heaven originated around 13,000 years ago. 325 years ago on the mortal plane. "_

_Dean frowned contemplatively. "You're telling me that most of the heavens of punishment exist because of Beta emancipation?"_

_"Not necessarily simply because the Betas separated from the Packs. Many Free Betas still pass through the veil into personal heavens of eternal peace. To be without Pack affiliation is not necessarily something that darkens a soul. It is perfectly possible to be pious without being within a Pack. Still, the numbers do not lie. In all the many millenia prior to the emancipation, the existence of a heaven of punishment was a rarity and the reason the first level is almost clear of such blemishes is that the souls there who did require enlightenment did eventually achieve it. The grey cells represent those souls who are gradually moving back into the light. But in the seventh level there are not only far more souls filled with sin than with goodness, but there are no grey cells at all. None of those condemned souls ever appear to progress towards the light. They enter their personal heavens mired by the weight of their own guilt and never break free of the shackling weight of it. This concerns us greatly. "_

_Dean's mouth dropped open in surprise as he considered the Omegá's words. "You're saying you aren't doing this. That you genuinely are not causing this suffering. The souls are doing it to themselves and you are helpless to prevent it?"_

_"That is so," the Omegá agreed. "The light of Heaven is fading, Dean, poisoned by the darkness of this cancerous infection of polluted souls. And, sadly, many of the heavens of punishment do not even exist with any validity. Far too many Betas pass through the veil with their souls stained only by indifference, not the performance of acts of cruelty. Most Betas are guilty only of standing by silently and thusly allowing the evil around them to thrive. The heavens of those Betas should not be punishment black but purgatory grey. Places of chastisement, perhaps, but genuinely places where redemption may be earned. Yet, there is not one grey cell in the seventh level of Heaven, Dean, for not one soul arrives here believing they might earn forgiveness. The moment they realise that Heaven is real, they drown themselves in self-loathing at their rejection of their faith, and assume themselves eternally damned."_

_"And the All-Father looks at his Heaven and he shudders with distaste at the spreading canker. He sees the inability of the souls to escape their heavens of punishment and sees only that they are irredeemably evil. He wishes only to rip the cancer from our midst. You must understand, Dean, that the existence of these individual heavens within Heaven itself are tied inexorably to the mortal plane. As long as the mortal universe exists, the personal heavens of the occupants of that universe will exist also. But should the universe be destroyed altogether, the personal heavens will also tumble into the void of the darkness. Heaven will be cleansed of this disease. Yet the All-Father's knife will not be delicate and precise. It will not carefully carve the disease away and leave the healthy flesh behind. All the enlightened heavens of peace will also fall into the void. It will be as though none of the current mortal universe had ever existed at all."_

_"So let me be sure I understand this. The Beta Emancipation, well, most specifically the evils of the Church of Abel, are causing more and more souls to enter heavens of punishment and the All-Father is getting so pissed-off with all this self-torture shit going on in Heaven that he is planning on destroying the Universe entirely?"_

_"Essentially," the Omegá agreed._

_Dean opened his mouth to speak but a sudden agonising shaft of pain ripped through his abdomen and he fell to his knees, clutching his stomach, crying out in pain. "What's happening to me?"_

_"We sorrow for you," the Omegá stated and, beside him, the essence churned with agitation._

_"This can't... can't be happening. It can't be real," Dean gasped, shuddering through another spasm of agony._

_"Three weeks now," the golden essence intoned. "Enough time for the Michael Sword to bear its bitter fruit."_

_"I don't understand," Dean cried._

_"You do," the Omegá argued. "You may not know how it was achieved but you know what it is that happens here."_

_"Help me," Dean begged. "Help THEM."_

_"There is no saving of the Michael Sword. The pain you are feeling is evidence it is already too late. His sacrifice was written. As it is written, so it must be," the Omegá intoned. "But the brother's fate is still fluid. You can save him by your own sacrifice if you are willing to do so, since you must know the identity of his Sire."_

_"Of course I am willing," Dean snarled. 'I don't give a shit who sired him."_

_"You will. If you choose to save the pup, he will bond you to his Sire. In the process of birthing, the pup's pheromones will breach the tears in your womb passage and the bonding will occur," enlightenment stated._

_Redemption nodded his agreement. "A Primá pup is always born with his Sire's signature. It is only at puberty that his scent will change into a unique signature. So without even taking your virginity, Michael will bind you to him forever if you bear the pup to term."_

_"Then I'll be a grieving widow very damned quickly," Dean promised, clutching his abdomen where faint but unmistakably, he felt the presence of the remaining pup._

_"Come," the Omegá said, "time is running out for your return and there is one last heaven you must visit."_

_He helped Dean to his feet and pulled him through one final shimmering wall._

_"Ohhhhh," Dean gasped, collapsing to his knees once more, tears streaming down his cheeks._

_"Don't cry, Mommy," the tiny dark haired cherub said, running up to Dean and throwing his arms around him._

_"How can... how... how can this be?" Dean asked, hugging the tiny Primá, his face twisted with agonised grief._

_"Though the Michel sword was never 'born', his soul still briefly lived and so he will live on here for eternity in his personal heaven."_

_"I chose this body, mommy, because this is how Misha will look. You need to see me, Mommy. You need to understand. You need to save my brother for me. And then I'll wait here for you. For both of you. For all of you."_

_And looking into his unborn yet already dead son's sapphire eyes, Dean finally understood everything._

_"Your name is Sasha," he told the little pup. "Not The Michael Sword. You are my son, not his. Never his."_


	110. Chapter One Hundred and Five

Although in previous centuries the Packs had tended to be far more mobile, actively following food sources from place to place and often battling each other for resources, by the middle ages it had became far more usual for permanent compounds to be established, as advances in arable farming enabled Packs to settle in a single location and create stonebuilt, fortified settlements.

Yet the peculiarity of the hierarchy of the Packs meant that none of the permanent settlements were ‘owned’ by any individual. Nor even, for that matter, did any of them belong to any specific Pack. The Pack Halls were constructed in the most advantageous geographical locations and residency within them was passed freely between the Primáres depending on the specific roles they were allocated by their Grandé Alpha Primá. It was often the case that a settled Primá and his entire pack would be ‘invited’ to vacate a Pack Hall at the whim of their Grandé whenever another Primá ascended to a position of higher favour.

So perhaps one social benefit of Seth Adamson’s general neglect of the Union was that his indifference stopped the political backbiting that had previously caused the Primáres to constantly jockey for favour against each other.  Primáres began to benefit from long periods of residency in their chosen halls and even often passed the Halls to their offspring as an inheritance. Able to remain in one location for a period of years or decades, the individual Packs thrived and prospered.

And, realistically, there were more Pack Halls than actual Packs, anyway, so there had never been any good reason for all the fighting over 'ownership' of them.  The Grandé himself had several Pack Halls of his own, each located in different parts of the Union, to make it easier to move location to enable him to govern local issues through direct intervention. But, of course, modern forms of transportation had allowed for much greater flexibility of movement than in previous centuries.

In the age of automobiles and aeronautics, it was no longer a necessity for any Pack, even that of the Grandé, to be a mobile one. But, admittedly, the settling into fixed Pack locations had predated the invention of the car, let alone the plane, because the emancipation of the Free Betas had curtailed the ability of the Packs to relocate on a whim. Surrounded by a vast population of people who were productive and useful (not to mention adversarial, even if not actively hostile) it made far more sense on both fronts for the Packs to simply stay in place and reap the rewards of having access to the Beta produced resources.

It was Seth Adamson’s Sire who decided that the most appropriate location for the primary and fixed Pack Hall of the Grandé Alpha Primá of the American Union should be located in Aspen, Colorado.

It was not simply the logical convenience of it being positioned roughly in the middle of the entire Union but it was also the highly defensible geography of the location that made it Adam’s preference as a place to raise his pups.

On inheriting the mantle of Grandé from Adam, Seth had not only chosen to remain in Aspen but had invested heavily in the infrastructure and defences of the Aspen Pack Hall.  It was naturally cradled at the foot of a horseshoe of mountains with only one accessible route for vehicular approach. Seth had added to that geographic security with the addition of numerous security features including a series of high, patrolled border fences that extended the Pack controlled area for several miles.

When Seth's son, Cain, had chosen to divide the Union into three and retain control of the United American States alone, he also decided to remain in Aspen and even when he divided the American States into five separate empires, he did so in a way that ensured his residency in Colorado remained secure. Cain also installed a series of anti-missile defences and invested in a considerable armoury of advanced weaponry. Although he didn't have any understanding of his bride's visions, he understood that a 'storm' was on the horizon and despite his day to day disinterest in Pack politics he never failed in his duty to protect his Pack.

Despite the fortifications of Aspen, Cain's final decision to remain there was governed more by Chuck’s preference than his own, as Cain would honestly have quite liked to take the opportunity to move to a somewhat warmer climate.  Chuck, however, was quite insistent on remaining in Aspen, saying he wished to remain in the Hall where he had the memories of his pups being born and raised. Cain indulged his bride’s apparent nostalgic attraction to the Aspen Pack Hall and never delved further into Chuck’s motivations despite his own disappointment at the choice.  He’d always rather fancied the idea of moving his bees to a climate that needed far less artificial assistance to survive.

Still, Cain had little interest in participating directly in any of the governance of the States he was still responsible for and, therefore, the time-consuming duties created by the need to maintain vast polytunnels and greenhouses to ensure the survival of his bees through the harsh Colorado winters gave him a wonderful excuse to avoid all the aspects of his inheritance that bored him completely.  He left the day to day governing of the Packs to his Primáres and, since they knew well enough that it was Chuck who would be the ultimate arbiter of any dispute anyway, it had become well known, if generally still unspoken, that it had been Chuck who had been acting as the true Grandé of the United States for at least the last decade.

One of the primary advantages of living in Aspen, from Chuck’s point of view, was that it was difficult to reach by commercial airline.  The closest a Beta owned plane could land to Cain's Pack Hall was almost seventy miles away.

Of course, that didn’t prevent Castiel flying directly to Aspen’s own small Pack controlled Pitkin Airport in his own private jet with the intention of landing practically in his mother’s front yard.

But even taking a direct flight path with his own plane, he still couldn’t physically fly there from Detroit in less than four hours. So Meg, Charlie and Benny insisted on coming along so they could continue the research into how they were going to attempt to change Pack Law in regard to Omegáres. They had piled onto the jet with cases full of old parchments and dusty tomes gathered from the archives of Cain-Crowley and were working their way through them en route.

Meg had pointed out, quite sensibly, that it was irrelevant what Chuck had to say for himself regarding his relationship with Dean if the Omegá still had no interest in mating Castiel anyway.  The primary plan, therefore, had to remain the application of effort and logic to the problem of resolving Omegáren legal status. Meg was certain that a _hope gift_ of personal freedom would be the ‘key’ to Dean’s heart and Charlie, who was Dean’s self-proclaimed ‘bestie’ concurred wholeheartedly.

Though, admittedly, the research had branched off unexpectedly into a debate over the point at which Pack Law and Beta Law had begun to diversify so greatly in America.  After all, it was all very good and well pushing through legal changes to allow Omegáres to have more personal freedoms within Pack Land, but the fact they couldn’t even cross a border in Free Beta land unless they were mated or accompanied by an Alpha guardian would make the whole business a sop rather than a true solution. 

Telling an Omegá such as Dean that he had the right to choose not to mate and even had the right to run his own Queen’s Hall would only increase the size of his ‘cage’, it wouldn’t actually free him from it. Because if he wanted to set foot outside of Pack Land in America, he would immediately become constrained by Beta Law anyway. And the most worrying part of that, in Castiel's opinion, was that the same situation was _not_ true in Norway. So there was a horribly high probability that Dean might decide not to return to America at all, after his trip with Gabriel, even if Meg and Charlie were wrong about Dean somehow being a 'universal true-mate'.

So it was necessary to unravel the threads of both branches of Legal Tenets back to the beginning, following the trail of modern legislature back to its roots, then work forwards again and fix both sides of the legal conundrum.  Because, certainly, if they looked back even as relatively recently as four or five centuries previously, the designation of Omegá had still been celebrated in America as one to whom the highest respect was shown. The most obvious answer, obviously, was to blame the War of Independence for the change but that was too simplistic as they had uncovered evidence of 'Free' Betas still petitioning their local Packs for the right to attend holy ceremonies such as Shab-e Yalda some decades after the 'War' was over. Which definitely implied the Betas hadn't deliberately made the choice to abandon their religion simply because they had left Pack Land.

"Wow. I think I've got it," Charlie said triumphantly, after pouring through yet another ancient manuscript for a while. "It didn’t actually happen with the emancipation itself. That’s why they don’t have anywhere near the same degree of legal conflicts between Pack and Beta Law in countries like España. Beta Law everywhere necessarily started out as an identical copy of Pack Law and was only altered by the provision of certain necessary Common Law amendments whenever the Independent Betas hit snags that couldn’t be resolved by applying Pack Law outside of a Pack structure.  The real rot in America started with Metatron, as we all know, but this is going to shock the fuck out of all of you. According to this, he wasn’t even a _Beta_. Who’d have thunk it?"

She laughed at the startled look on everyone's faces.

“Yeah. I always thought the American War of Independence was driven by the same Beta drive for self-detemination that was demonstrated worldwide within a couple of centuries of the Packs settling in place but, reading this particular book, which was a contemporary history written about three hundred years ago, it was actually a far more complex situation here in America. Here, it seems, there were a number of Alphas who also felt disenfranchised.  Maybe the Packs were already becoming so huge here that Primá pheromones couldn’t possibly infiltrate all of the lower levels of the Alpha ranks. I guess it just ran out of juice before it disseminated that low down.

“So, anyway, according to this book, the so-called _Beta_ revolution in America was actually instigated primarily by some twelfth and thirteenth level Alphas. They were right at the bottom of Pack Hierarchy, practically on a level with the Betas in Pack eyes, so probably preferred the idea of being the top dogs in the new independent societies,” Charlie continued. “It seems they stirred the majority of the Betas up into a state of complete dissatisfaction and convinced them to rebel and, conveniently, ended up in charge of the new Pack-free societies they created. Well, for a generation at least, before they naturally died off.”

“I've never even heard a _rumour_ that Metatron was an Alpha,” Castiel said, frowning darkly. “He certainly isn’t portrayed as one in any of the modern history books.  Why on earth would an ‘Alpha’ create the Church of Abel?”

“Well, the Church of Abel wasn’t always a rabid bunch of xenophobes,” Meg interrupted thoughtfully.  “At first it was just about the idea of equality between all the designations, wasn’t it? Though I seem to recall it was primarily about raising _Betas_ to equality so I still don't see why an Alpha would have promoted it.”

“Yeah,” Charlie agreed. “I’m sure the modern Betas have chosen to white-wash their own history to change Metatron’s designation, just as they have conveniently 'forgotten' what he actually intended to do. I mean, don’t get me wrong, what he did was fucked up enough in itself but, according to this book which actually was written at the time, the truth definitely isn’t what history states. In fact, three hundred years ago no one called themselves ‘Free Betas’ in America at all . They called themselves ‘ _Free Independents_ ’ and most of the guys running the show were low-level Alphas. They only changed the name to _‘Free Betas’_ about eighty years later when the original Alpha leaders had all either retired or died.

“Metatron was apparently one of the low level Alphas who actively encouraged the revolution to improve his own prospects. He managed to finagle himself the position of Independent Governor of Free Connecticut after the War of Independence. It seems he wasn’t satisfied with just gaining personal power though. He wanted to leave a _legacy._ He actually wanted to create a dynasty with his position going automatically to his eldest son but, obviously, he could only sire Betas and at that point no-one had even voted a Beta into any position of authority yet let alone ratified the idea of a Beta inheriting a Governship. Metatron, being an Alpha-douche, couldn’t envisage it ever happening naturally either, so Metatron’s idea of a personal dynasty was a no-starter unless he could get his oldest _Beta_ son into his position after him. He tried to pass law after law enabling Betas to hold office in the new Independent Lands but he was always overturned by the Independent Betas themselves quoting Pack Law scripture that stated that Alphas and Omegáres were automatically higher in rank than Betas, so it would be heretical to put a Beta in charge of any society that contained them.

“It seems the original emancipated American Betas didn’t want to leave their religion behind any more than the European ones did.  They genuinely were just wanting to create a society without direct Pack control but they fully intended to stick to the All-Father’s tenets and they were perfectly happy with the idea that now and then a Beta woman would pop out an Alpha pup who could be groomed to be a new Leader.  It seems it wasn't even the Alphas whom the independents had the problem with. It was the idea of Alpha Primáres. They wanted to escape Primá compulsion but they never actually wanted to self-govern at all.  You know, I’ve spent my whole life kind of hating being a Beta because of my fucked up ancestry and, ironically, it seems that I’ve been paying those guys a disservice because they were doing the best they could just to make a better life for themselves and, in the end, it was an _Alpha_ who screwed everything up for them.”

Benny blushed awkwardly.

Charlie smiled at him. “It’s not your fault, either, big-guy. Anyway, no-one is to blame for the modern Beta attitudes except the people who adhere to them. But it’s just kind of sad to realise that none of this shit was ever necessary at all, was it?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel said, thoughtfully, “I think some level of conflict was probably ultimately inevitable simply because of the sheer disproportion of the Beta population versus that of the other designations. I can’t blame them resenting being left in a permanent state of fiefdom. But still, if they’d kept their faith, kept their respect for the Omadonna, maybe we could have worked out some political solution that satisfied everyone.  As it is, there’s not a lot of room for ‘forgive and forget’ in the Packs because of the way they’ve treated the Omegáres since the Church of Abel became active.”

“So does the book tell how Metatron ‘found’ the Abel tablet?” Meg asked.

 “Well, it says that Metatron went quiet for a couple of years after all his attempts to amend the law failed. He remained the Governor but didn’t have a lot to say for himself politically. But then he suddenly came back into public life having mysteriously _found_ an old tablet, which supposedly dated back millenia, that established a non-heretical path to Beta equality."

“Conveniently,” Castiel grunted.

"Exactly, “Charlie agreed with a grin. "Everyone obviously knew it was probably a fake but no one could actually prove it. Carbon-dating didn't exist back then and the tablet looked the part, but it just didn't make any damned sense that anyone had written crap like that about Betas being as capable of being leaders as Alphas were."

"You're a Beta and probably the smartest person I've ever met," Castiel said. "I can't see why a Beta couldn't theoretically hold any position of authority. Look at Meg. Anyone who meets her becomes clear pretty damned fast that it isn't _me_ running my Pack Hall."

"I'm smart enough to know what the role of a Beta is," Charlie replied tartly. "As much as I like to play Queen in my personal life, I know that's fantasy. In real life my skills are designed for me to be the power behind the throne. Betas aren't leaders, they're the ones that make the leader's desires actually happen. Betas aren't a _lesser_ designation, any more than Omegáres are. We're just _different_ and there's no point pretending otherwise. Everyone should just play to their strengths. Betas pretending to be Alphas, let alone Alpha Primáres, just weakens society as a whole."

"I agree," Meg said staunchly. "I'm glad to be a Beta because it makes me smarter than you, CP. It doesn't mean I covet your responsibility. I take pride that me doing my job well means you are free to do the job that _you_ are supposed to be doing. The only thing wrong with the current Pack Structure is that it doesn't offer enough opportunities for Betas like Charlie and Me to use the natural skills we are born with. Maybe you should do something to address _that_ next, after you've solved the Omegá problem."

"So about the Abel tablet," Benny prompted, getting the discussion back on track.

"The Abel tablet claimed that the All-Father changed his initial commandments and altered it to give Betas equal rights with Alphas and Primáres. Metatron was smart enough, at least, not to mention Omegáres  at all. He knew _that_ wouldn't fly. He stuck to just the three designations relevant to his own ambitions.  It was obviously bullshit but enough Betas bought into it to let Metatron succeed in promoting his son, Gadreel, to be the next Governor of Connecticut after Metatron retired. That was the actual beginning of the rot. From then on, whenever the Betas wanted to go against scripture, they quoted the Abel tablet as justification.  But, of course, the real power in the packs lay in Omegáres, so the Metatron dynasty gradually started a campaign to discredit the matriarchy of The Omadonna. That's when, peculiarly enough, Gadreel's son, Alastair, God I _hate_ that name by the way, discovered yet _another_   ancient tablet," Charlie stopped and looked expectantly at her 'audience '.

"The Omegá Testament, I presume," Castiel growled. 

"Absolutely.  The new word of the All-Father on Omegáres. Alastair was as clever as his grandsire. He didn't actually deny the original scripture about Omegáres, he just slanted it a little differently. Omegáres remained _holy_   but rather than being seen as the life-givers of the Pack, the sole source of Alpha Primáres, they were subtly transformed into a creature created for the sole purpose of controlling the otherwise rampant natures of Primáres. The original scripture said Omegáres were a gift from the All-Father for the creation of Alpha Primáres. The revised scripture said Omegáres were a gift from the All-Father for the _control_ of Alpha Primáres. Just two words of ancient enochian retranslated eventually changed the perception of Omegáres from blessed mothers to whores and Primáres from leaders to primitive beasts that needed taming with an offer of Omegáren flores. Then all the subsequent laws were based upon that single change of meaning. So, over the years, more and more laws, supposedly for the protection of Omegáres, have really been about destroying the reign of Alpha Primáres."

"So all we really need to do is prove the Abel tablet and the Omegá testament are forgeries, and we could unravel all the laws based on them?" Benny asked.

"Well, essentially," Charlie agreed. "Though centuries of law making aren't going to get dissolved overnight but, sure, proving the original documents forgeries would make all the subsequent laws fall apart."

"It would be a legal bloodbath," Castiel admitted. "It would take years for new legislation to get established."

"Well, just think how much profitable work that will make for lawyers like you," Meg smirked. "Oodles of lovely cash being generated for the Pack coffers."

"He'll need it," Charlie laughed. "I don't think Dean will be a bargain-basement bride. I'm pretty sure there's a lot of money in Norway so you might have some stiff competition to fend off."

"Speaking of which," Meg chuckled. "I can feel my ass vibrating. Hang on a mo."

"Crowley promised to call her the moment he and Dean got on Gabriel's plane," Benny stage-whispered, as Meg stepped back to take the call in private, "But we all know that conversation won't have a lot to do with Dean at all." He winked at them all significantly.

"I thought the plane wasn't leaving until after lunch time," Castiel said, frowning with suspicion. Then he startled as his own phone rang and he saw that it was Gabriel who was calling him. "Something's wrong," he said, his heart beginning to hammer from a sudden rush of adrenaline.

"WHAT THE FUCK?" Meg howled, the colour draining out of her face as she dropped into an empty seat in obvious shock.

"What is happening?" Charlie demanded.

"Something bad," Benny said, his darting between Meg and Castiel and reading their anguished expressions. "Something really bad."

Meg and Castiel both hung up their calls at the same time and ignored both Charlie and Benny's questions.

"We're still an hour from Aspen. Do you want to turn around, CP?"

Castiel shook his head firmly. "Gabriel and Raphael are handling it their end. Mateo is already on his way to Aspen to meet us. Even if Michael really is involved in this, then I still need to talk to mom more than ever. He's goddess-touched. He's the only person practically guaranteed to know where Dean actually is."

~~

Castiel met with Chuck alone in his apartment on the Queen's floor.  Which was significant in itself, since it signified that Chuck wished their conversation to be private.

It was, admittedly, a source of great comfort to Castiel that it was so. 

It offered him hope that he might actually get some honest and straightforward answers from his mother for a change.

He came straight to the point. "Dean has been kidnapped."

"I know," Chuck stated calmly.

"Did you know this would happen?"

Chuck met his eyes and said, "I did. It was written."

Castiel's face twisted with anger, though his voice remained steady as he accused, "Then you _did_ know."

Chuck shrugged. "I didn't know when, specifically, it would happen. I did, however, know that it would."

"Is he alive? Unharmed?" Castiel demanded urgently.

"He is alive and though he will suffer hardship and deprivation and sorrow in the short term he will, ultimately, be unharmed. However, this event will cause certain changes that are necessary for future events to occur," Chuck prevaricated.

Castiel laughed bitterly. "You're saying this _had_ to happen?"

"It was always inevitable," Chuck agreed.

"Be honest with me, mother," Castiel said firmly. "I need to know. Could you have prevented this?"

Chuck arched an eyebrow thoughtfully as he regarded his son's stern, judgemental expression. And, when he finally answered, it was neither with the answer Castiel hoped for nor with the one that he dreaded. Instead, with perfect seriousness, Chuck said, "Perhaps the real question you should be asking is whether _you_ could have prevented this."

Castiel blinked uncertainly, the wind taken out of his sails by Chuck's quiet challenge. "What do you mean?" he asked suspiciously.

Chuck shrugged a shoulder casually. "Long before any lasting harm came to Dean, your wife Megan was sent a particular video recording direct to her cell phone, Castiel. Had you chosen to watch that video or, even, had you chosen to attend to the problem in Sioux Falls yourself at that time, rather than leaving it for poor Daniel to handle alone, all of this could have been averted. You would have been mated to Dean already, probably with a pup in a cot and another on the way. But you chose not to act to save him, because you thought it was a case of just yet one more suffering Omegá, just one of many. No-one special or different or particularly worthy of your attention. Just another 'mutilated whore' perhaps? 

"Consider that before you judge me, Castiel. _Now_ you feel differently about Dean. _Now_ you wish you could turn back time and jump on a plane yourself to rescue him. But _now_ is too late. Because for the Goddess there are no special cases. There are no Omegáres who are considered discardable. There is no special consideration for one particular Omegá over another. You had a chance to act and you did not do so because you felt it was impossible to save every Omegá. Perhaps you were right. Perhaps that is a sad truth of the world we currently live in. But the Goddess does not discriminate the same way. He does not accept that you can pick and choose which Omegá you want to believe is worthy of being saved. As far as the Goddess is concerned, you should either save none or save them all."

Ashen faced, Castiel regarded his mother. "How do you know about the video?"

Chuck shrugged again. "I may have seen a vision of that day and I may have arranged for someone to be in the audience," he admitted. "I may even have asked for the video of that event to be sent to Megan."

"So you could have stopped that whole obscene performance happening in the first place," Castiel challenged.

"How could I have stopped something that I had already seen happen?" Chuck countered. "My visions are not linear. They exist outside of time and space. Some points are fixed, Castiel. Others can be changed. I offered you a path that _may_ have allowed a change of subsequent events. You did not take the opportunity to find out."

Castiel swallowed heavily, struggling against nausea. "You couldn't prevent it but hoped I would stop what happened afterwards? You're saying all of this is _my_ fault?" 

Chuck couldn't bear the distraught look on his youngest son's face so answered at least that question with total honesty. "I had no expectation that you would act to save him," he admitted. "Yet the opportunity did genuinely exist in that brief moment of time. Of course none of this was your fault, Castiel. You did not harm Dean and you were perfectly right that you had no obligation to personally help him. If you flew into battle every time you suspected an Omegá was being abused in Beta Land, the country would have escalated into full scale civil war by now.

"Besides, I doubt Dean would have thanked you for your intereference at that point since it most probably would have led to his brother's death. These matters are terribly complex, Castiel. It's never possible to pull just one stone out of the wall without running the risk of the whole edifice collapsing completely. You ask why I did not act and you condemn me for inaction. But you see only one tiny aspect of a much more complex whole. You zero your attention in on one specific desire of your own. That of protecting one specific person. I have to look at the complexity of the entire situation. I don't have the luxury of such selfishness. But regardless, no, I don't believe you could have changed anything. Not really.

"I'm merely pointing out that your own moral high ground is perched on highly perilous foundations. Don't point your finger at me for inaction just because Dean is important to you _now_. You weren't particularly concerned about his particular situation before you realised he was your true mate, were you?"

Castiel looked sickened, but he rallied enough to say "But you _knew_ he was my true mate. Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you warn me that my own true mate was in danger? Were you ever going to tell me that he was your own great nephew? My cousin. Adam's older brother?"

"Ahhh," Chuck said. "I wondered when you'd find out."

"Why did I have to 'find out'? Why didn't you tell me yourself?"

"Because I didn't want to muddy the waters, Castiel. I didn't want you taking that knowledge and believing it meant that Dean was destined to be your Bride."

"Of course, he's destined to be my Bride. He's my true mate."

"He is. Yet, despite that truth, I saw another _absolute_ vision of the future, Castiel, and in that vision Dean is with pup and the pup is not yours," Chuck replied calmly, and watched as Castiel literally staggered at the revelation. "So forgive me for putting my love of you, as my son, in front of my concern for him, as my kin." 

"So Dean is destined to mate someone else after all? Even though he's my true mate?"

"That is not necessarily the correct conclusion to draw," Chuck replied ambiguously.

Castiel opened his mouth. Then shut it again. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath and counted to ten. Then he looked directly at Chuck and said, "Please, mother. I appreciate your position as the chosen prophet. I respect your necessity to retain a certain level of...mysticism at all times. But could you, just for once, cut the crap and act like my Mother rather than the Omadonna's emissary? Would you please just tell me what the hell is going on here? Because I'm telling you now, for once and for all, that I will not hang around and wait for Adam to grow up and I will not go looking elsewhere for a Bride either. I believe Dean Winchester is my true mate and, if he will have me, he will be my Bride. If he will not be my Bride then... well, I shall not have a Bride at all. It is as simple as that." 

"No substitutions possible?" Chuck asked, with a wry smile.

"No," Castiel declared firmly.

"Are you so sure?"

"Positive."

"Even if I were to tell you that although the possibility remains that Dean might yet mate with you, if he is pregnant with another Prima's offspring then there is no possibility he will ever bear your pups also," Chuck challenged.

Castiel startled a little, then firmed his shoulders, a look of determination settling on his face. "Even so," he declared. 

"Are you sure, my son? Because I have seen this so clearly that I could have reached out and touched the vision with my own fingers. When you next meet with Dean, he will already be heavy with the pup of another, although the method by which he will become so is admittedly not natural."

"I don't understand what you're saying," Castiel groaned with frustration.

"Dean is not in the hands of the Packs, Castiel. It was not Michael who removed him from the Philadelphia Pack Hall. It was a Beta. A man both Dean and yourself have met before. A man who works directly for the American Free Beta Government. I have seen this to be the truth. Whatever you or Raphael currently believe, the actual perpetrator of this crime is not Michael Sethson. It is the scientist, Alastair Lues."

"So you know where Dean is?" Castiel demanded urgently, far less concerned with the identity of who had taken Dean than in the act rescuing him from them.

"I know where he is NOT," Chuck replied. "He is not in Canada. He is not in any Pack Land. I am not certain where he is at this precise moment in time. I know he will be in some Beta-owned laboratory shortly. I do not know where that laboratory is located."

"How can you not know where it is?"

"It's a vision, Castiel. There aren't any convenient maps on the wall of that vision with arrows announcing 'You are HERE'," Chuck snapped. "I see what I see. That is all. And what I see is Dean Winchester in Beta Government hands, some weeks from now, pregnant through some manner of artificial insemination done by Lues."

"Why the hell? How the hell?" Castiel demanded.

Chuck shrugged. "I see events, not motivations," he lied. "I only know some of what is and what will be. This is a fixed, inflexible truth, Castiel. Regardless of your actions today, nothing will change the fact that this particular event will happen. Dean will be impregnated shortly. It is a fixed event that cannot be altered."

"Do you know who the sire will be?"

"I know only that it will not be you," Chuck replied. "I have no knowledge of where or how the sperm was obtained. I know only that it is not yours. What's important here are the facts of the matter. On birthing, Dean will become automatically bonded to the Sire of his pup even if he never actually identifies or meets him. He won't be mated to him but the process of later accepting another Primá's mating bite will effectively sever his biological bond with the Sire. And that will automatically render him barren.

"So you may be able to rescue him, Castiel, but offer Dean Winchester your mating bite after he has birthed this pup and you will acquire nothing more than a barren bride and another man's pup to raise. You're a Grandé Alpha Primá, Castiel. You have an actual legal obligation to your Pack to sire, at the minimum, an heir and a spare. Even if you were willing to still accept Dean under the circumstances, it wouldn't be legal under Pack Law for you do do so."

"I'm a lawyer, Mother. Telling me that something I wish to do is against the Law is less a threat than a challenge. If the law won't allow it, the law will be changed. But it doesn't really matter, does it? I already have Alexiel as an heir and can adopt Dean's pup as my 'spare', so the Law is satisfied regardless."

"Do you?" Chuck asked urgently.

"Do I what?"

"Still want to do it? Still want to mate him, knowing he will be barren?"

Castiel's expression was sad and slightly haunted but he answered without hesitation. "He's my true mate, mother, and besides I literally fell in love with him the first time I saw him. Like Meg said to me about his mutilations at the time, I have to ask myself whether I would put aside someone I already loved for becoming mutilated and obviously the answer is no. Similarly, if my Bride were taken by a rival and rendered barren by the severing of our bond, I would still climb down into the pits of hell itself to retrieve him. So the only difference here is that it's somehow happened before we've even mated in the first instance."

Chuck regarded him thoughtfully. 

"You do realise that your bite at any point in the pregnancy would cause a change in Dean's own signature and that would result in a spontaneous abortion, thusly saving Dean from bonding to the pup's Sire in the first place? And if he doesn't bond to the unknown sire, then he won't subsequently have a severed bond and he won't be left barren? It would be the best guarantee of you achieving your _happy ever after_ with Dean," he suggested slyly.

"It might be the most expedient way," Castiel said, "but I don't think the word 'best' could be applied to that scenario under any circumstances."

"Perhaps Dean will ask you to do so. He may not have been 'raped' but he's been impregnated against his will, which is an intolerable personal violation," Chuck suggested. "What if he does ask you to deliberately kill his unborn pup?"

Castiel's face twisted with distaste but he shrugged a shoulder. "Then I will do whatever he desires me to do. The decision will be his alone. But he's an Omegá. I imagine every instinct he owns will drive him to protect the pup inside him regardless of its origins. So whilst I'll respect his right to choose otherwise, I have to work on the assumption that he will carry the pup to term."

"And, knowing that, you still want to claim him as your Bride?" Chuck asked, curiously. 

"I do," Castiel replied firmly. 

The tension drained out of Chuck completely, his whole body relaxing so much he had to sit down on suddenly weak knees. "Thank god," he muttered to himself.

"Will you help me to find him?" Castiel demanded.

"I cannot," Chuck replied, though it was unclear whether he meant he was unwilling or unable. "Trust me, though, Castiel, that all will now be well. The decision you have made here, the path you have settled in yourself to take, it will come to pass and all will be well."

"I need to find him, mother. You said yourself, he's in Beta hands. Suffering God alone knows what suffering and indignities. Can't you at least give me a hint of where to look for him?"

Chuck's eyes blazed gold, his face smoothing into an alien countenance of cold dispassion.

"Look to your own problems, Castiel Cainson, for you have many to solve. Dean does not require your help to escape the clutches of the Betas. He does not need to you ride to his rescue like a knight in shining armour. Dean will be well. I promise you that in less than three months, he will be safely back in Pack Land. The only question will be _which_ Pack Land he will choose to reside in. If you wish to avoid Dean moving, perhaps permanently, to Norway, you have much to do and very little time in which to achieve it. Perhaps it is time that you looked to the brother."

"The brother?"

"Samuel Winchester will be the key to your enlightenment, Castiel. I suggest you find a way to retrieve him from your Uncle Lucifer and bring him back to America. Perhaps in doing so you might gain Dean's favour. Certainly, possession of Sam will be the most expedient way to ensure that Dean opens a discourse with you. And, besides, it is time perhaps that you become aware of certain... subtleties of the current situation."

"Why are you helping me now?" Castiel asked carefully.

The Omadonna smiled and, though the expression was still too alien to be comforting, Castiel felt the chill of the room finally raise a little.

"Because, finally, you have pleased me, Castiel Cainson."

Chuck's eyes faded back to green and he blinked at his son, shaking his head as though waking from a momentary fugue.

And, perhaps, that might have been the end of the conversation had the doorway not suddenly burst open to allow a tiny, black-haired Queen to charge through it screaming at the top of his lungs,

"Why the fuck did you do it, you bitch?"

 

 

 


End file.
